English 9 and the Past, Present, and Future

Friday, February 17, 1995

It is seven-twenty and I am standing outside my class, welcoming students into my room. I have been doing this for the last minute or so, after rising from my desk, from my pre-school preparations: putting the roll sheet scantrons on my period-by-period clipboards, reviewing the bulletin for any news to pass along to students, putting work to be returned to students with the clipboard so I won’t forget to pass it back. I looked up to survey the room, its thirty-eight desks set up in a odd configuration--twenty-eight of them chevron’ed diagonally facing the long whiteboard (the "front" of the class facing away from the windows, now draped because of glare) in two sets of fourteen, and ten desks facing the same direction from back near the window, and some roaming space between.

Since today is a holiday in the local elementary school district, I’m expecting lower than usual attendance and I’m getting it. The first period class roll states thirty-eight students enrolled (down from the term’s opening day of thirty-nine [union contract decrees the class capacity for English is thirty-nine; second period started at forty but is now down to thirty-eight as well]). But that tells only part of the story. It is now nine days into the new term, and five students have still yet to check in to class. On an average day, yesterday for example, I record five additional absences on top of the five no-shows; today, it’s closer to ten.

Last term was even worse. My third period English 9 class averaged nine absences per day. Of course, that had repercussions on grades. Fifteen students failed...fifty-four percent of the class. There were forty-one teaching days during the term: nine of my failing students missed ten or more days, an additional four missed between six and nine. Thus, of the fails, all but two had missed over ten percent of the class. When it comes to missing assignments, however, the numbers explode. With forty assignments during the term, five of the fails were missing thirty or more assignments, one was missing twenty-six, and the other nine had between eleven and nineteen missing assignments.

(At this point, a digression... in my English 9 classes, it is my belief that all students can achieve an A or a B. On weekly assignments, if the work does not reach A or B quality, I mark the errors, return the paper with the words "Do Over" across the top, and it is the student’s responsibility to bring it up to at least B quality. If the student refuses to do so, I refuse to give it a grade. If the work is turned in late, it is penalized ten percent for the first week late, and additional ten percent for the second week late, and I do not accept any work that is more than two weeks late [keeping a gradebook is hard enough without having to enter scores from a month before]. On the helpful side, however, ninety percent and above earns an A, and seventy-five percent earns a B; in most classes, seventy-five would earn a C. At the end of the term, I will award C grades to those students earning between seventy and seventy-five percent. I award no D’s because I refuse to reward Dissatisfactory work. Digression over.)

Now questions could be asked: What kind of assignments was I giving? Couldn’t I have done something--ANYthing--to raise the number of assignments students were submitting?

And the answer for the first one is simple: On an average week, students would turn in sentences for the week’s ten vocabulary words (an assignment on which we worked in class), they would take a quiz on that list, they would complete a Cultural Literacy worksheet (for which there were weekly note-taking exercises--so that any student taking notes in class, or willing to do library research for [mon dieu!] homework, could pass the assignment), and they would also complete Daily Oral Language assignments (in which they would correctly edit sentences given and discussed in class). There were also four long-term writing projects, for which we used a modification of Atwell’s Writer’s Workshop process (done at least three of the five class periods per week). Thus, most of the work for the assignments was done in class, but the finalizing of the assignments was meant for homework. This I will not change since it is my goal to instill in the students some sense of responsibility.

As for the second question, the answer is a bit more complex. For the first six weeks of the term, I held "Academic Detentions" every Wednesday afternoon, mandatory sessions for every student who had missing assignments over the previous two weeks. "AD" as I call it would begin at two-thirty-five and I would stay as long as it takes for the students to get caught up; individual detainees did not leave until their work is complete, corrected, and of A or B quality. Once I stayed until six o’clock. Following winter break, however, I stopped academic detentions. It was an experiment. And what I learned was interesting. The number of Fails did NOT noticeably increase, but many A’s dropped to B’s.

So to the questions, I believe I can answer that: a) the assignments are not so difficult as to be out-of-line; and b) the academic detentions were only moderately effective--i.e. if the student is determined to fail, then s/he will.

However, since no policy in my classes is set in stone, and since I, too, am disturbed by the number of fails in my English 9’s, I have instituted a number changes for this term. First, I will be sending home bi-weekly progress reports to parents, telling them of missing assignments and academic detentions. Second, I will be reinstating academic detentions, to assist those students who need that extra push to succeed. Finally, I will lower my end-of-term cut-off for a C; now any student with a percentage above sixty-six will earn a passing grade. This last is my most painful compromise...it feels like "dumbing down" to me. And I despise that. But I figure it might keep the administration off my back.

I say this because at both campuses, I had and have been called on the carpet for excessive fails. At my first school, a principal (no longer there) tried to insinuate that I gave too many fails. I let him talk, then I told him of every measure I took in bringing achievement up. He backed off. Last year, I had a similar conversation here with the present principal. I told her of my institution of academic detentions, and all seemed fine. But with last term’s numbers, I feel I’ll be feeling the heat again. Also, a English department colleague told me yesterday that she was approached by the assistant principal who--in as non-threatening and relaxed manner as possible--told her that she may want to "keep an eye on (her) F’s." The golden ax is coming. I can feel it.

All of this, or at least a very quick Reader’s Digest version, raced through my head as I looked at the partially filled classroom five minutes before first period. I shook my head and walked across the room toward the door, smiling and saying my good mornings to any student who wasn’t already working on something or talking to a friend. I stood at the door, welcoming more students in, saying hello across the grassy area to the two male teachers in the other wing. The administration likes its teachers at the door during passing periods. They claim it makes for less tardies, but most of us know that it’s better for security: teachers can break up any fights that start, or at least they can take action before any aging red-coats decide that the fight’s gone too far and they must make an appearance.

I usher a few more students in, when I see the assistant principal--my colleague’s hatchet man--heading my way. A week ago, he was handing out candy to us staffers who were outside toeing the administration line and standing by our doors. His face is more sheepish today, and I know why he’s here.

As he approaches, his two-way radio buzzes from his back pocket and we can both hear his name mentioned, something to do with parents waiting in the office. "Aw, shit. Not those parents from yesterday," he says, but I’m not sure it’s to me he’s saying this.

I smile anyway. "Don’t you just hate it when you hear your name behind your back."

"Yeah." He smiles uneasy. "Uh, Bill," he begins.

I smile wide. "Good Morning." I can see it coming.

"I’m not even sure why I need to tell you this..." He pauses, I think, hoping that I’ll help him out by asking what it is all about. I don’t. Let him squirm. "It’s just that I’ve been asked... The grades from last term have come in. And your Fails are up. And I know that--"

I cut him off. "Almost every F is accountable to attendance." Still smiling.

He tries to smile. This is tough on him. He’s the hatchet man, and he doesn’t want the job. He knows that the grades are mostly bullshit and that attendance is a quagmire on this campus. He’s been put up to this. He would rather be principal and put others up to bad-message delivery, but he’s not; and at one year away from retirement (so the rumor mill grinds), he doesn’t want any part of this. It’s a little pitiful, but I’m not going to help him out...if the administration is going to play its little games, it doesn’t mean I have to play. "I’m sure they are, Bill. And I’m sure that with all the WASC stuff this year, it can’t have been easy keeping track of the nines." He brings up the major accreditation project I’ve been working on this year--too many hours spent with too many hardworking teachers on a report that many of us are afraid will just be so much whitewashing when the visitation/accreditation committee visits our campus next month. But it sounds like I can’t juggle extra-curricular stress with my class load. This I find bordering on the insulting, but I let it pass, waiting to see how this is going to play out. "So that you know, we all support what you’re doing in the classroom... We’re just trying to lower the number of Fails on campus." He looks at me like he doesn’t know what to say next.

Neither do I. Luckily, another assistant principal walks up, holding his radio. When he interrupts our silence, the golden hatchet man almost looks relieved: "Remember those parents I told you about yesterday..."

"Yeah..." He turns to me. "Bill..." He lets it hang in the air.

I don’t want to be outside when the bell rings--it sets a bad precedent for the students--so I smile. "No problem. Have a good one."

I see him retreating as I close the door. "Thanks, Bill."

When the door is closed, I look at a class that will be filling academic detention next Wednesday.