A Student Comment

After first period one of my Freshman came up to me and said, "Mr. Lynch, I think that we are not doing enough writing in this class. Today we spent one hour going through one chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird." I thanked him. Then for the rest of the day that little comment haunted me. Perhaps I am not giving him enough writing. I should certainly say, that he is not getting enough writing in my class. I suppose that for a comment like this to affect me so much, may say more good things about my teaching than bad. I always question myself. Am I doing enough for my students. Then I look at how little time I have. Now, 110 English students and 30 World History students. I am still grading essays that I assigned three weeks ago. And I vowed to myself that I would not assign another essay or major piece of writing until all of the others were graded.

I generally spend from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM or 6 working- with a half hour break for lunch. Then I come in for at least 3 hours every Sunday to make up work at school. This past batch of papers were especially difficult. I thought that I had prepared them in every way to produce a good piece of writing. They met in groups to discuss concepts then do a presentation on the subject. Hence they will be well prepared to write an essay on the subject. Unfortunately the preparation seemed to do little good.

I constantly question myself about my teaching effectiveness. One to one teaching is easy. But as the numbers increase a teacher must make compromises. So by the time the class sizes are up to 30, the class become something of a factory setting. The teacher orchestrates the group to do common exercises. The teacher engages in discussion and get maybe 50% to engage. Students gauge their own worth in the class by the number of points the can accumulate in the class by a series of test. This focus on points has been the bane of my teaching career.

I have one class this year where I can experiment, although I consider controlled experimentation in education a good idea. In my history class I decided to divide it into three parts: basic knowledge and information, important ideas and the story of history. I do not have enough time to go into detail now, but I promise one blog to explain my techniques.

So for my unsatisfied student I am working on intensifying my writing curriculum. And in fact students need improvement in writing badly. I do some grammar exercises every day and have worked. It is already Monday. I will begin today with a new writing exercise. Let's see if it helps.