Falcon Finale: LA Student of the Year

This was my introduction of the Language Arts Student of the Year at the Falcon Finale on May 26, 2005.

In the past, when I have had the pleasure of presenting this award, I have always tried to keep my speech brief. As my students will testify, no one is more aware of the often-unbearable heat than I am (and this suit doesn’t help). But this year, despite the heat and the suit and the spotlight and all the other things here that I would usually want to escape as quickly as possible, I can’t keep it short because I have too many good things to say about this year’s language arts student of the year. He deserves the extra time.

Because our Honors English class takes place mainly in cyberspace, students have to be self-motivated and personally responsible. About half of the 60 students who signed up for the program at the beginning of the year actually followed through for the entire four terms to earn the honors credit. Many of those students will be honored here tonight, for they are among the best and the brightest Fairfield has to offer. One, however, stands out as a particularly adept student of language because he genuinely understands what it means to communicate and he strives not only to perfect his own writing and reading skills, but to help his classmates do the same.

One element of the online Honors English program is what is called a discussion board. It is a site on the Internet where students post their written reflections on topics I provide. Over the course of this year, students wrote responses to 30 discussion questions relating to the literature we were reading or various other topics of current interest. Most students dutifully posted their responses (at the last minute) and seldom bothered to pursue the activity beyond that. This year’s language arts student of the year, however, often took it upon himself to open new forums of discussion or to respond to those opened by others. During the elections last fall, he and a small handful of his classmates were able to carry on a political argument that was more civilized and educational than anything in the "professional" media. By the end of the first term, I realized that the students in the class were taking their cues from him, and I was able to step out of the discussion. He became my unofficial cyber-TA. He not only answered technical questions about how to get the computer to do things, but his posted responses to discussion questions often became the model that others would follow. And a fine model it was! He was never shy about going first, and after a while they expected it from him.

Another aspect of the online program (about which there was no small amount of griping and moaning) was the blog. It’s short for “web log,” and honors students had to write 500 words a week about a topic of their choice. Our language arts student of the year took the blog to levels I did not anticipate. His writing was not only thoughtful and incisive, but he discovered ways to post audio blogs, and he often accompanied his writing with guitar and piano music…that HE played. Also, whereas most other students were focused completely on their own work, he always read and commented on his classmates’ writing, thereby making the process truly one of communication and sharing of ideas, not just the agonizing chore that many of the students seemed to think it was.

Because he was willing to put himself out there as a model and example to his classmates….

Because he put his heart into his work, thereby making the experience richer for all of us…

Because he helped make a potentially impersonal online class an interactive and friendly experience…

And because he used his excellence as a communicator for all the right reasons….

This year’s language arts student of the year is Trey Williams.

Before you go...

Hey folks!

This will be one of the last blogs I post for this "class." I haven't decided for sure if I will continue to post to this blog next year for a new audience of honors students, but I suspect it will continue to exist in one form or another (maybe with a different name) for as long as I teach. Why? Because I have discovered that this is a good way to keep track of many of those little "teacher thoughts" that I have had a thousand times a year for the last 16 years but never seem to have handy when I need them. For example, you know how there is that one vociferous kid in most classes who always seems to pipe up loudly in response to anything the teacher says? You all know at least one of them, and you've all probably been annoyed by him a time or two because sometimes you really do want to hear what the teacher is saying, and his continual interruptions make that difficult. Believe me, it's annoying for teachers too. But I think I have figured out something that might help me deal with that kid, and if I write it down here, I can refer back to it when I need to. Two things I need to make clear to Mr. Mouthhead are these:

• Do not answer rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions, by definition, do not require a response. They are mainly asked for effect, or sometimes to point out the obvious. No response is expected or desired! And while you may reflect upon them later or even believe that you really do have an answer, just remain quiet and allow me to continue.
• When I say Shh or ask you to be quiet, don't respond. I do not need to know the reason you were talking or whose fault it was. I frankly don't care why you were making noise; all I know is that you were disturbing me and preventing me from getting on with the business of this class. So, when I give any indication that I want you to quit talking, just quit talking, sit quietly, and wait for further instructions.

These two pieces of information, in this context, seem out of place, but now that I have written them down, I can review them when I encounter my new Mr. Mouthheads next fall. And I can add to them, change them, print them, forward them, share them with other teachers, access them from anywhere there is Internet access; and no matter how big they get, they don't take up any actual space. Blogs work for me. They suit my personality. I realize that is not the case for most of you, but I suspect your experience with blogs and discussion boards will come in handy later on (in college if not high school) because the world is moving towards distance education. Maybe the thing I like best about blogs is that they allow you to witness your own intellectual growth. You can easily go back and see what you were doing nine months ago and compare it to what you are doing now...and maybe use that information to decide where you will go next.

One thing I wanted to say before you go on with your lives is Thanks! Thanks for helping me out with this nobel experiment. You are the first group of students that I have ever required to write blogs, and I think most of you took to the task fantastically well...much better than most adults would. If you doubt this, go back through your own blog archives; read what you were writing back in September and compare it to what you are writing now. Most of you have learned how to focus a piece of writing around a single idea. Most of you have discovered how many things there are to think about and know, and you can discuss those things intelligently. Many of you have discovered the interactivity of blogs. Some of you even had fun with them. And even if you decide to delete your blog or just let it sit unused for the rest of time and eternity, you ought to read back over it once because you will often find that you said profound things that you were not aware of at the time. You may decide to save some of those kernels of wisdom for future days when you may need them.

But here is the one lesson I hope this experience leaves you with: Writing and Thinking are inseparable. Good writing is clear thinking. Writing helps you improve your thinking and vice-versa. Those who write well are those who think well. They are the people who will move and shape the world. And as with any other skill, practice makes perfect. So while you have been writing to fill these blogs (sometimes from the well of your passions and sometimes just to meet the deadline), you have been practicing. You've been learning how to think more clearly. And I am pleased with the progress I see in most of you.

As a teacher, I feel that writing is part of my job. I can't teach you to write better if I am not continually writing myself. Again, blogs serve me well in this respect. Here is a link to something I wrote (from a teacher's perspective) that sums up my feelings about why English matters. Although it was written long before anyone had ever heard the word blog, I think blogs can help us meet many of the goals for language arts classes.

Find me on yearbook day so you can sign my yearbook with a real pen, but remember our "virtual" classroom and the things we talked about and practiced here.

It has been my honor and pleasure to know all of you!

Tough Questions

One of the last discussion board posts to which you will respond this year will be regarding your own attitudes and performance in Honors English. One thing I have tried to do is provide very specific written instructions for every assignment and due date, but lately I am getting the impression that some of you aren't reading them. For example, if the assingnment calls for a letter of 400-500 words, and you submit a letter of about 150 words, that's clearly not "honors caliber" work because, regardless of the content of your letter, you didn't follow all the instructions. For another example, consider the list of due dates for blogs and discussion board posts. They are clearly written right in the middle of the honors web site, yet some of you haven't made all the required posts, and many of you haven't made them on time. (It's easy to tell because the discussion board automatically puts the date on each post.) Is it reasonable for those of you who are not completing the assignments to receive credit just like those of you who are? Maybe more importantly than these examples, did you think hard and always give each thing you submitted for this class your best, or were they just more "tell the teacher what he wants to hear so I can go play Nintendo" responses that honors students are so good at? If this had been a traditional class during the school day, and each assignment was strictly graded, would you have received an A?

Consider these questions for the next couple weeks.

The Countdown is On...

I just read the most recent round of blogs (from those of you that are still posting them by the deadline). I can see that May is going to be as busy for most of you as it will be for me, and I realize that during such times it is difficult to find time to blog. I mean I admire the ingenuity of those that have started posting article reviews from your science classes, but is it really that hard to come up with something original to say once a week? Even after all this practice? If you're like me, you find that you want to blog periodically just because you have something that you feel needs to be said or because you want to get a handle on something floating around in your mind. Writing is excellent mental exercise, and it it also helps you come to grips with your own feelings about things. I am curious to see if any of you continue blogging even after our class is over.

The discussion board? Well, I can't say that I am pleased with the fact that only two of you have posted the character sketch that was due last week. I know the book is complex, but as honors students, you should be able to handle it. Your future teachers will expect you to, so I would be remiss if I didn't give you something challenging to study. As of this morning, only six of you have passed the AR test. Yikes! DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE! You have been warned many times. Also, if you post a character sketch that does not meet the requirements of the assignment or that is not honors caliber writing, you will have to revise and resubmit. If you wait until the last minute, you will not have time to do that.

Enough warnings. Now I want to know why your generation is so afraid of specifics. "I don't get it!" I have heard that statement so many times in the last two weeks that I want to puke. I don't get it! is not a question; it is a pathetic excuse. It's okay not to understand something that you have genuinely tried to understand. It is okay to ask questions about what you don't understand. I even put a place on the discussion board for you to do just that, and I have tried to answer all the questions that have been posted. But a lot of the "questions" aren't really asking anything; they begin with "I don't get..." as though you are terrified of actually looking in the book, finding the passage you don't understand, and telling me where it is. I don't get it is really just a way to say Tell me the simplest answer. Don't make me work to understand.

Why is asking specific questions that hard? Imagine you are in a math class and you don't understand how to do a problem. When you go up to the teacher's desk for help, don't you take the book with you so you can show her the problem? Would it work if you walked up and just said, "I don't get it."? No, your teacher has to know what the question is before s/he can answer it. And in order to make your question clear, you have to ask a specific one (i.e., show the problem). It is a challenge to ask a specific question, and many of you apparently are not up to that challenge. True, we don't teach you how to do that in school. You aren't tested on whether or not you can ask a specific question, but I guarantee that your ability to succeed in life outside school will often hinge on making yourself (especially your questions) understood.

Here's what I think. (This is where I start to sound like the crotchety old man that I am.) I think the vast majority of ninth graders today are so accustomed to the immediacy of everything in life, that anything requiring your attention for more than ten minutes at a time is ultimately boring and dismissable to you. It's "too hard." You "don't get it." Two-hundred years ago, when they weren't out struggling to survive, people read books like A Tale of Two Cities in the newspapers. Each week a new chapter was published, and people would wait by the press to buy their copies. They would go home and read the continuing story with their families, and they savored every detail. Most of you seem to disdain details, and you fear any sentence that contains a grammatical construction more complicated that subject-verb-object. Yes, Charles Dickens is a writer who demands your full attention for long stretches of time. He is going to describe every detail about that door before the character knocks on it. If you can't focus on the description of the door, you'll never know what happens once the character goes inside. Some things in life are not immediate. Some things require your attention for a long time. Sometimes you have to think hard to come up with an answer. And that ability to focus and think is what good teachers are really trying to teach you. It is what schools should be concerned about. (And because they are often more concerned with other things, it is your responsibility to develop these characteristics in yourself.)

Alas, The System is more worried about evaluating you with long multiple-choice tests. (As I write this, I am watching a classroom full of students hunched over those odious yellow booklets and filling in bubbles on pre-coded answer sheets. We'll be doing this for three more days.) It is likely that whatever you end up doing for the rest of your life will involve some reading and writing, but it's not the kind of reading and writing that usually appear on the year-end exams. I continually question whether or not the tests actually measure anything that matters. They can figure out if you know how to properly use a semicolon, but they don't require you to write a sentence that employs one. They ask you to read a short essay on how to build a fire without matches and identify the main idea, the supporting details, and the transitions, but they don't require you to prove you understood it by building a fire without matches! Maybe it's different for math, in which there is one right answer to each problem and by employing the proper formula, you will arrive at that answer. But with language, the real proof is in the direct application. Can you apply what you read to your own experience? Can you communicate your thoughts precisely to another person? The year-end tests don't evaluate those things, even though they are more important than whether or not you can choose the best title (from four choices) for a piece of writing. So even though I am one of the people administering the tests, I want you to realize that real learning, the kind that really counts later on, is the learning you do on your own because you care enough to do it, not the stuff you're tested on at the end of every year. Reading A Tale of Two Cities is good practice for both, but someday there will be no teacher there to force you to focus your attention or make you ask good questions. You need to start doing these things on your own. When you do, lots of things in Life will seem a lot less complicated than they do now.

Finally, I should share this. When I was in ninth grade, my English class had to read Great Expectations, another Charles Dickens classic. I hated the book so much that I didn't actually read the entire thing. I tried! I swear, I tried! But I couldn't get into it. The endless descriptions lost me; I fell asleep; I was tortured by the subtle sarcasm that I did not understand. I just didn't get it! I hated the book, and I hated my teacher for assigning it. I read every other chapter (or so) and floated along by listening to what my classmates were saying about the story. I faked my journal entries. My final essay was one of the worst pieces of writing I have ever conjured up. It was so obvious that I didn't know what I was talking about that my teacher didn't even have the heart to grade it. I shudder to remember this experience. I shudder even more to think that I have done the same to some of you.

But a few years later I picked up a copy of Great Expectations and read it all the way through. (One of my college goals was to go back and actually read all the books I was supposed to have read in high school but didn't. Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, The Scarlet Letter, and a couple others were on the list, along with Great Expectations.) I loved it! The fact that I wasn't being required to read it and that I took the time to read it carefully somehow opened the gate to my enjoyment and appreciatation of the novel. I tell you this in hopes that you will one day come across a copy of A Tale of Two Cities (the unabridged version, this time) and give it a second chance. Read it on your own terms for your own purposes. I guarantee you'll like it!

Any book can be engaging and entertaining, but it is what the reader brings to it that makes it so.

The same can be said of Life.