I like the quote “good is the enemy of great.” It’s on Gillian Hart’s white board, and since I’m in her room often because of classes we share, I see it up there all the time. I’m old, too, and exposed to many circles in life, so I see things that are present.
That may be hard to contemplate for some, but what I mean is simple–if you don’t know it, or are not exposed to it, you sometimes can’t see it. After Trump’s inauguration, there were MANY quotes on social media from George Orwell. Orwell wrote 1984, your basic totalitarian-government-is-bad book that should be on just about everyone’s must-read list for this year. None of my students had seen any quotes from Orwell on social media. My argument is, even if they had seen the quotes there was no reference point for the words to make any sense. If you don’t know it, you can’t see it.
I’ve written at length about how important it is for students to be exposed to things, to know everything, and to be lifelong learners who are curious. It’s common sense coming from any teacher. And our students are good, though we want them to be great. They’re good, fine, adequate, sufficient, average, decent, swell, nice, and, most of the time, get things done with little argument. They get it done, but oftentimes at a base level. If my minimum word length for writing is 300 words, some write 300 words, as if 301 or more might hurt them.
Educators talk about the application of rigor–how we should challenge our students by having rigorous lessons that have them go above and beyond. Any teacher could assign something that met higher standards for students. Just last week, when I gave a test on Camus’s The Stranger, I took one of their questions from a university source that I found online. Students complained. They said it was hard, that they weren’t sure of what to put for an answer. Yes, it was hard, because even though I had hinted at the answer many times in class, I hadn’t come out and given it to them literally. Inference is not always easy.
Recently, I’ve seen papers online of former students. Some are notes on all the Presidents. Some are notes on Environmental Science terms, complete with their definitions. Some are Calculus notes. By the way, all those classes are AP classes–advanced placement kids who will go off to college filled with answers for a test, but no reference for it in life. Maybe that’s the nature of AP tests–the spilling back of information learned to adequately answer the question posed.
Yesterday, my students turned in a paper on a musical act that had them incorporating and integrating quotes and learning how to cite a paraphrased piece. I had MLA rules on one side of a handout; an example from the master (that’s ME) was on the back. I told them to parrot it, to do whatever it took to get things absolutely correct and beautiful, as every clue on how to do it perfectly was contained on my paper.
Not one paper was correct.
One student cheated. Her paper was correct, had no mistakes, but wasn’t about a musical act. I found it easily online. It’s the second paper in as many days that I’ve found online.
Songs were in italics (nope) while albums were also in italics (yep).
I was told that ‘N SYNC not only did “Bye Bye Bye,” but “I Want It That Way.”
There must be a new movie out called “The Sound of a Music,” for I only know The Sound of Music. It must be a short film, too, since the title was in quotes.
And so on. Not one paper was correct. They were good. They were almost right. But none–NONE–out of 50+ papers were spared the pen.
Writing is rigor. It is a discipline that we don’t like because it means grading papers. But teaching is also rigor. Everyone talks about how all the great teachers need to come together and make good students great. What no one ever accounts for, though, is that it goes both ways–that great students can make good teachers great.
Maybe when I take a break from late starts and collaboration and common/formative assessments and PLCs and RTI and Common Core and standards-based teaching, maybe when I look at data and synthesize my criteria for a rubric, maybe, just maybe I can be great again. Well, that’s assuming I’m even any good right now.