I Can Teach a Man to Fish, but I Need Help Buying Bait

Guest editorial on Ace Weekly's blog. If you are a teacher or would like to help teachers, you need to check out DonorsChoose.org (link in the editorial).

Typo Positive

“A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” -- James Joyce

During my now five-day weekend, I've been curled up with many student essay drafts, spilling out the remnants of four pens (two black, one blue, one red) onto their pages. As a grader, I have two things I try to keep in mind:

1) Students tend to wait until the last minute to make changes, so I don't want to write "awk" or "rephrase" or something that will leave them dumbfounded at 2:00AM the night before the final paper is due. So I tend to write quite a bit of explanation on the pages. (In a few instances, I've actually written more words than the student's effort contained.) My hope is to provide a guiding, meaningful voice for those students racing against sleepiness and the morning alarm.

2) I need to keep a notepad or laptop next to me so that I can capture (a) positive or negative examples (transitions, use of evidence, passive voice) for later student instruction and (b) unintentionally funny mistakes for my own enjoyment.

I suspect many English teachers keep such a list, and I'll share a few of my favorites (these are students from long ago, and they are all in their early thirties now). What we called "error analysis" in my old life in software development should illuminate these examples:

The "I've never written that word before" Error

If you are not well-read, it is easy to have a word in your vocabulary that you know only as a sound associated with a concept. Having never seen it in print, you must improvise.

* I had never before been asked to serve as a paw bearer.

The rain lashed down on the mourners, bowed and whimpering at the sight of the huge paw being borne into the small, country church.

* These students from different religions can help their fellow pears understand all cultures and feel more of a community with all people.

Though they try to hide it with their parochialistic bluster, Pears--all to often--feel so alone.

* Mr. Webber has been found guilty of many Mister Meaner crimes.

No commentary necessary.

The Spell Check Error

For those of us who remember the days before it was ubiquitous, spell check is a godsend. But like any great power, it requires great responsibility and caution in its use.

* The purpose of the KIRAS state assessments is to ovulate students and schools.

This from a college student. Thank God those tests were eliminated before I started teaching high school.

* In a multicultural cirrocumuli, students are given the opportunity to study such greets as Maya Angelo, W.E.B. Dubious, and William Falconer

This is really a treasure.

Falconer has always been my favorite author, but I'm not sure why a high altitude, billowy cloud of multiculturalism would be required to read the utterly WASPish literary giant. Nor is it clear how a cultural diversity-endorsing mass of water vapor would promote Mrs. Angelo -- with whom I'm not familiar.

Less confusing is said cloud's desire to advocate the work of Mr. Dubious, who found time amidst his busy career as a super villain to be a momentous figure in the civil rights movement in the early 20th century. He was truly one of the greets.

I'm headed back to the piles of papers, so there are certainly more to come.

The blank page as a mine (mind?) field

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." -- William Faulkner

It's amazing to me how this generation of young people, which likely writes so much more than many previous generations (though in the fragmentary phrases and phonetic inventions of text messaging speech) seems so paralyzed by the blank page.

The academic achievement of the student does not seem to matter; high performing students and low performing students alike will say to me repeatedly: "I don't know how to start."

At first, I presumed their anxiety came from the challenge of writing an introduction. Any conscientious writer knows well the tension inherent in moving quickly from nothingness into an engaging piece of writing. However, even my attempts to have them defer the introduction altogether--just write a thesis and then go into the first point--fail for many writers.

Many years ago, I read a writing instructor refer to some students seeing the blank page as a mine field--a place where their pens or pencils travel gingerly because mistakes and failures lie everywhere. My first go-round of teaching, I saw a few of these students. Now, a large proportion seem to write just waiting for the explosion.

To counter this anxiety, I'm trying hard to have them express their ideas in whatever language seems comfortable. If the tone is informal, actually conversational, or even in text speak, I'll take it on the draft if that's what is required to get their hands and minds to move confidently across the page. "My paper will sound totally ghetto," one student told me today. However, I feel confident we can work to get their diction and tone correct in revision if we can just get them comfortable expressing on paper the great ideas they express so willingly when I ask them to talk about their position.

There are people who would say this is capitulating to the forces breaking down the English language. Maybe it is. But for me this is not a theoretical issue; I have 16- and 18-year-olds showing up each day and I'm paid to make them better readers, writers, and thinkers by the time they leave.

I simply believe that if students come to high school hearing only non-standard English at home, practicing non-standard English through constant text messaging, and lacking the wide reading that might tune one's ear to standard English, Language Arts teachers are forced to get them to express their ideas in whatever way possible.

I just think I can teach proper English employing a draft loaded down with colloquialisms, but I can't teach students how to better express their ideas if those ideas never make it past the pen.