“If you’re in my workshop with me,” I explain, “and I ask for a chain whip, do you know what to give me?” The students shake their heads and there is a little mumbling: “I’ve never even heard of it.”

“And so if I tell you you have problems with pronoun-antecedent agreement, and you don’t understand either term, how can you correct it?”

This is why I begin the year with a quick review of the parts of speech — the tools we use in communication. While I’m a fan of project-based learning, I generally conclude the lesson with a cumulative test: it’s quick and easier. I don’t want to spend a lot of time naming the tools; I want to get into using the tools.

In an exam for my English I Honors students, I 1) include a section with a standard parts 2) of speech 3) exercise: a paragraph with numbered, highlighted words. Students 4) simply identify the parts of speech.

I also include what I originally thought of as a more challenging section. As we study the parts of speech, we talk about how we know that this word is a noun or a verb or an adjective. The second section is designed to assess this knowledge.

The section begins with Lewis Carroll’s poem, “Jabberwocky,” printed in its entirety:

Jabberwocky

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

The instructions of the section are simple: find an invented noun, a made up adjective, etc., and then explain how you know it’s that particular part of speech. We know, for instance, that “Jabberwock” is a noun because it’s preceded by “the,” as in the line, “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?” We can similarly deduce other Carrollian neologisms.

As I’ve administered the test, though, I’ve discovered that this is the easiest section. I’ve found that ironically students do best when working on parts of speech with nonsense words.

This perplexed me briefly, but I’ve come to the conclusion that all the mental baggage that accompanies known words tends to confuse the students. Students read “television,” picture the flat screen hanging in their family room, and think, “It’s a thing. That makes it a noun.” That reasoning works fine for something like, “What’s on television tonight?” It doesn’t work for sentences like, “This is my favorite television show,” in which “television” is working as an adjective.

When we’re working with “slithy” and “vorpal,” meaning is absent. It’s only the function that informs students.

I’m trying to make this apply to “regular” English, but how can you escape the denotation of a word?

And I am pleased with that.

Being a teacher without being a student on a regular basis is about like being a mechanic who never drives. It’s one thing to “dish it out.” It’s another to take it.

To see the classroom from both sides of the desk is to ensure reasonable expectations from one’s own students.

At the end of the last school year, I had students write a letter to this year’s students. It was, in a sense, something of an evaluation. I add the “something of” because it was not anonymous;  however, it did affirm some things I’ve been trying to accompolish.

I’ve tried to make the class to be rigorous: to be challenging but not impossible. Based on the comments, I think I succeeded.

• This class is going to be one of the hardest classes that you will have so far in your life. You will learn many things in this class.
• Let me tell you Mr. Scott is probably one of the hardest teachers you might ever have.
• This upcoming year for you will take a lot of work. Mr. Scott has made this year very challenging for me. Although the work is extremely hard, I have become smarter and a better writer overall. If you think his class is tough, keep in mind that he is preparing you for what will come in high school next year. Mr. Scott is such a good teacher and helps you when you don’t understand. He actually teaches you what you need to know.
• Although this year was very challenging for me I can honestly say that I have improved my writing skills tremendously. I hope that you will do the same. All it takes is hard work, attention and not giving up.
• Even though this is a difficult class, it can also be very fun. I was never a good writer or reader, but I found many of the activities we did to be very helpful and it allows you to visualize what you are reading.
• This class is not a normal class, nor the the teacher.  [... Don't] be a class clown.  Just respect him, and he will respect you.  [...] Mr. Scott is by far the most reasonable teacher.
• The tests Mr. Scott gives you are a lot more difficult[ than the standardized, cumulative test given at the end of the course], and those are the ones you should really study for.
• Oh and the tests in this class are uber hard. I mean, its [sic] crazy.
• It’s important to always read the chapters in a novel when Mr. Scott assigns them to you.  You may think, “Oh, it won’t matter”, but Mr. Scott often has pop quizes [sic] on reading you were supposed to do.  Spark Notes can be helpful, but it’s better to just do the reading.  Because you can expect the questions to be things not covered on Spark Notes.
• Coming into English 1 you might expect it to be relatively easy because of how easy the rest of your English classes have been, but it’s not.  English 1 for Mr. Scott is very demanding, there are many tough projects, and a lot of hard books to read.

If only I could get this kind of response from all of my students…

The first week of school is behind us. A hectic week of bureaucracy and smiles. The former comes from all the forms and materials we distribute to students and then take back up almost immediately. “Bring this back before the end of the first week!” The latter comes from my yearly effort to be genuinely friendly.

There’s an old saying — advice to new teachers, really — that a teacher should never smile before Christmas. By the end of every school year, I’m so frustrated with my failures in dealing with this or that disruptive or disrespectful (somewhat synonymous in many ways) student that I promise myself that next year I will be a rock until Christmas. I will lay down the law and accept no compromise. I will be a drill instructor. I will pound them into submission and then convince them I’m a decent and nice guy.

Yet summer wanes, my planning progresses, and I inevitably turn my thoughts to what I want to do during the first days of school. And it occurs to me that I would most definitely not like to be beaten into submission as an initial experience with anyone. It would be hard to overcome the negative feelings such a first impression would create.

So when the first day of school arrives, I begin again to walk the ever-wiggling line between being a kind authoritative and devolving into a kind permissive teacher. Students might find the first overbearing at times but have a general faith — now and in the future — that all was done for their best; students find the second to be a favorite teacher while in middle school, only to look back on the teacher as one who was “nice but didn’t teach us much.”

Last week — the first week back — was the honeymoon period. The real test now begins. The sad thing is, I already have my eye on one or two that I believe will be major problems before the end of the first quarter. If I can work effectively with students and keep it only to one or two, it will be a great success.

Why is it nostalgia is so much more potent when we’re young? Perhaps it’s simply our general lack of experience, and we’re often thinking, “It can’t get any better than this was,” and so we’re melancholy. Maybe it’s part of the naiveté of youth, but this too is a result of being inexperienced in the cycles of contemporary life.

Of course, there were as many not tearful as there were with glistening cheeks. Perhaps they’re not as sentimental as the rest of us. Perhaps they have more experience in their fourteen years that has taught them the transience of most things. Sadly, it might be that they learned about temporariness from the love, attention, and affection they’ve received.

I have at least one such student every year. I always feel like I let him down. I always look back at the year and see countless opportunities to do more, to be more, for such students.

It leaves me wondering, once again, about the marks of a successful year. Testing-wise, I was very successful: I met my MAP score goals, and my E1H EOC grades average was just where I thought it should be. Yet what use are acronyms in determining a successful year? It seems a relatively shallow metric.

The truth is, I became a teacher because I simply love working with kids. Perhaps a selfish reason: I do get a certain high when I connect with a kid and feel I’ve somehow helped him. It’s hardly altruism, especially considering the times I’m doing the opposite: the moments when the urge to take a ridiculous behavior personally and become viscous becomes overwhelming. So maybe it’s not surprising that I have the depressive phases to go along with the manic moments.

This is all to explain why I’m feeling down even though it’s the end of the year.

Another kid left today that I find myself thinking, “I’d like to have another shot with him.” I’d like to have him in my classroom another year and manage to get myself out of the way and see what he needs and give it to him. His needs were not to be met by following the curriculum or making him play by all the admittedly arbitrary rules of the classroom. There was more going on in his life than iPods and texting friends, and I’ve a suspicion a large amount of it was negative. My class might have been one of the few bright spots in his day, but looking back over the year, I doubt it. I communicated to him all the things I swore I never would express through body language and tone to a student.

I finally caught on at the end of the year. (Why did it take so damn long? I knew — I had a similar student last year, and I swore I wouldn’t do what I did this year.) While other students were working on a final project, I realized the project might easily turn into yet another zero for him, and so I differentiated: I had him write an essay on three things he could do next year to meet with more success in the classroom. I gave him a pencil and a legal pad (he seldom had materials), and he always replaced the items on my desk at the end of the class.

What I read when he was done was a stinging condemnation, though he was polite in his tone and word choice. He didn’t even mean to condemn me. He just shared some feelings. Feelings of inadequacy that I fear I only heightened. Feelings of hopelessness that I worry I did nothing to assuage. Feelings of being trapped and only vaguely realizing it.

Real success in the classroom is not measured in completed assignments and MAP/ITBS/PASS scores. Success in the classroom is measured with a metric that, like black holes and dark matter, is hypothetical at best. We can infer it from a student’s smile, or a boy’s pride at walking into class having pencil and paper, or a girl’s wide eyes at getting a C on a test.

I forget this too often.

The school year ended today. It was as I predicted: lots of joy, fair amounts of crying. One girl said, “It’s not going to hit me until tonight. Then I’ll be sad.” And another student added, “And happy, cause we’re in high school.”

I know just how they feel. If only I can keep all this in mind until next August, when I’ll surely another Denny.

Such an odd thing: we’ve spent 170+ days working together, and we’re all sick of each other, rather like a family on a long vacation. A bit of time apart and all would be well. Yet “a bit of time apart” is impossible: the students move on, and we teachers remain, waiting for the next group.

It’s as if we’re on a cosmic treadmill. We take a few steps with the kids, and though we all (teachers, students, parents, administrators) keep walking, the students slowly move on ahead of us teachers, occasionally looking back with a smile of thanks, occasionally staring straight ahead, occasionally — tragically — looking down.

“I’m so sick of all this,” we all mutter, but come what may, there will be tears on the final day, and I’ll probably be accused of laughing at someone’s tears as I was last year. “No, no, I’m not laughing at you,” I’ll insist. “I’m just smiling because it’s all rather sweet.”

It’s this time of year that I start making resolutions for the next year. Knee deep in all the mistakes I’ve made this year, I resolve not to do this or that, promise myself to be more systematic about some thing or other, commit myself publicly to more of this, less of that. I’ve a six-page, detailed outline of changes I’ll be making in one course next year, and I’ve only just begun recording my thoughts and plans. (A lesson learned from last year: all the brilliant ideas one has about changes to this or that unit tend to disappear the day school is out.)

And in the midst of all this planning for next year while making sure this year ends positively and productively comes a call from a parent. The long conversation includes a story about how her son came into my class apprehensive. Now he admits that the class is “alright” because I’m a “cool” teacher.

And another student sends me an email: “Thank you for helping me get through this year maintaining my grades.”

Bittersweet moments, indeed.

Read these two sentences:

• The odor of the blossoms drifted across the field.
• The fragrance of the blossoms drifted across the field.

What is the primary difference between these two statements:

1. connection
2. connotation
3. context
4. conceptualization¹

She’s selected “connotation,” but she’s not sure. She clicks “context” and then “connotation” again. She clicks back and forth, several times.

I linger to see what decision she makes. I cross my fingers, hold my breath, hope that she’s going to select the right answer. Glancing away for a brief moment, I’m disappointed to see that she’s made her selection while my attention was diverted. Being forbidden to discuss the test, I’ll never know if she got it right.

There’s a lot pedagogically wrong with that simple fact. ²

The question floated up in the midst of a quiet, productive moment. It was, in a word, a gift.

“Of course,” I answered, deadpan. “What else would it be made out of?” I was wondering how long I could keep the straight face.

“Really?” She wasn’t buying it, and quite frankly, she shouldn’t have: I’m a bad liar.

“Seriously.”

A pause as she searched my face for some sign of deceit.

“Would I lie to you?” I asked, still holding the straight face.

“Yes!” she laughed.

At that moment, a young man seated behind me stood up, marched to the garbage can, and violently spat out his gum.

That question was a gift, I tell you.

Childish, unthinking people
go through life as enemies of themselves,
committing detrimental actions
that bear bitter fruit.

Glenn Wallis, in his notes about his translation of the Dhammapada, explains that “childish” in this context as several meanings: “childlike” is certainly relevant, but the Buddha also meant a “person who ambitiously pursues material fortune, being pushed along by an ever-strengthening current of “I, me, mine.” (125) (Other translations render “B?la-vaggo” simply as “the fool”, but I prefer Wallis’ less vitriolic “the childish person.”)

Later, in “The Practitioner”, we find a similar notion:

Do not carelessly swallow a copper ball and,
burning, cry out, “This is pain!”

All too often, we cause ourselves the pain we’re certain has exterior source. And nowhere is this more evident than the middle school. In that setting, it might sound like this:

They say it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, but I’m not convinced. Smiling is not always easy: sometimes I want to scowl because of some frustration; sometimes I want to have a blank expression due to exhaustion; occasionally, I don’t want to hide my anger. In spite of all of these competing emotions, though, I still try to smile.

I know I must be doing something right when students smile back at me. It means that we have, at the very least, a pleasant working relationship (though frowns don’t always mean the opposite). And a good relationship is an important part of the foundation for learning.

Oh, whom am I kidding? I’m a mean ogre…