participation peer pressure

I used to give points for participation, but in the English class I just guest taught, I scratched it in light of two things – one the grade pollution discussion we just had in class, and two, the Virginia Tech incident. I decided I need to go back and work some things through before I go back to giving points for participation. Briefly explained: in the English classroom I was teaching in for 3 weeks, there are the two rows to the right occupied by the "popular kids." They are one large crew, they're somewhat unruly – it was difficult to get them to stop chatting and passing notes to each other, if they weren't applying make-up and flirting. However, they are smart (if not smart-asses) and participated meaningfully. In fact, they dominated the discussions. The next two rows to the left were kids who were not in the popular clique. These students participated occasionally. It was a mixed group of students some of whom wrote the best stuff I read in the class. Lastly, there was the far left row. This row was occupied by one French American student and three Chinese/Chinese American students and no one in that row participated in discussions. I chalk the participation patterns up to popularity and comfort more than a comment on the student's engagement in the material. The strength of the written work in the class did not bear out a correlation between participation with subject matter engagement, analytic ability, or sheer writing talent.

One of the things that have influenced this is something I read regarding the shooter in the Virginia Tech incident. When he read aloud in his English class (undoubtedly he was required to do so), classmates ridiculed his accent and told him to go back to China. I wondered when I read this, where were the adults in all of the bullying he edured? I have a zero tolerance policy for bullying in the classroom, but even with my thin skin (I was subjected to a lot of humiliating bullying in my early adolescence), I know that things slip by me. Additionally, much bullying takes place on a subtle psychological level, and there is often no need for spoken words, a simple look or smirk between students can be enough to reinforce an insecure student's position at the bottom of the social pecking order. The fear and damage from ridicule is so profound I can't force kids to share in front of their peers when they might be scared to death of being laughed at or scrutinized by the "popular kids." So for now, I will not punish or reward participation.

10th Grade Honors English

've taught a colleague's class for a couple of weeks. I wanted to do a unit on writing. Writing something other than the 5-paragraph essay. So I decided we'd do a letter to the editor type assignment. I have worked ridiculously hard to create materials for this unit since I built the entire thing from scratch. We looked at advertising. The idea was to find something about which they would have a lot to say without having to spend a lot of time on learning a new text. That part of the plan worked pretty well. I had a collection of fantastic and controversial ads, the students were willing to talk and had a lot to say.

The teaching writing part I'm not sure was as successful. I did do a modeling exercise and it seemed to help the students figure out what I wanted from them. I need them to edit their letters one more time - and so I think I'll give them a sample of a letter that I write that they can model. I've decided that modeling is the best way to teach a particular skill. Ever. On the other hand, contrary to what some of our recent readings (in my C&I class) claim – that all writing should be authentic – so that students buy in to the work… students are so used to writing essays, that asking them to write a letter to the editor seemed far less authentic than just writing an academic essay for a teacher.

Case in point: this morning one of the students came in and asked the Mr. Markwith when they would be back to doing English. He said, "you are doing English." But it made me think about Nelson's question on the first day of my C & I class, "what does it mean to do English." Obviously, according to this kid, media literacy and letter writing doesn't cut it. If it were my class - maybe I'd have a dialogue in the first place about why we do what we do in an English class. But instead, I just continued to set up the projector feeling slightly bad about boring the students so much that they were eager to do Othello instead.

Today's slide show was a collection of great spoof ads (the best of them came from Adbuster's website). The students seemed to really engage with them. I think parody is a great way to understand a text. Since parody operates on surprising the reader's expectations, comprehension begins with identifying those expectations. This is a good place to start in discussing reading a text – even if that text is an ad. After we looked at the ads and pointed out the way they operated, we went to the lab (turns out the school has an amazing lab with fast computers and Photoshop installed) where each student created a parody ad of their own. They have tomorrow to complete them. And then Thursday we'll show them as a class.

Their final assignment will be to edit - one more time - their letters to the editor. For extra credit they can bring them in to class in a stamped addressed envelope. There is a massive attrition rate with each assignment. I'm not hounding them for their work. Mr. Markwith has reminded them that the assignments will count in his grade book. But short of that, I guess a part of me just feels, "it's not my class." The measure of success will be in Markwith's next 5-paragraph essay assignment, where we will hope to see students playing with their language just a little bit. As a vestige of the writing they did on this unit – developing a strong voice and taking a position in a piece of writing. If his next round of 5-paragraph essays are just a little less boring, we'll have succeeded.