I took 50 narrative writings home this weekend to score and provide feedback on. It was a beautiful weekend and I will admit, it was really hard to find the motivation to sit down and give the papers the time and energy they all deserved.
I finally sat down to the task on Sunday morning. It took me over two hours to just get through one class. I took a break and got outside for a while before returning to the task and completing the second set of narratives. To say I was disappointed is an understatement.
I knew the kids would struggle. I knew that with COVID and some virtual and some in person last year and so on and so forth, I knew there would be gaps in the learning that we would need to address. I had touched on some that I thought might come up, and others became readily apparent after scoring them all.
What I was not prepared for, however, was how off-track many of the writings were. Despite my slide show with visuals and comic representations of narrowing your topic to a “nugget” story and not a “whole chicken” story; despite all the times we practiced each technique, read exemplars, worked with peers, used checklists, etc., despite all of that, many of these narratives were so far from the mark that I just sat at my counter in frustration. It is one of the hardest things about teaching – to realize that no matter how many hours, how many materials, how many repetitions, how many one-on-one conferences, our lessons can still fall very short. Kids just don’t get it sometimes.
I finished scoring them and texted my family to vent. “If you ever want to question your career choice, try grading 50 narrative writings that you’ve spent a month teaching just to see how many don’t follow the directions at all.” It only took a moment before my dad, ever the educator, responded with exactly what I needed to be reminded of.
“Let them re-do it.”
Which is exactly the advice I needed. Of course! Let them re-do it! I didn’t need to think this was the ending point. I needed to realize that this just “informed my instruction” as we like to say. I met with each student in a brief one-on-one conference to go over their writings the following morning and to share my feedback and suggestions. I then sent each student off to work on improvements. I had loaded resources onto our Google Classroom page including videos that re-taught each concept. I reminded the class of the resources we already had at our disposal, including the checklists, exemplars, partners to work with and more.
I’ll admit, I really dread the one on one conferences. Even when I was writing the remarks yesterday, I hated having to tell a student that it just wasn’t great. Especially when s/he had remarked in their writing reflection how proud they were of this writing. I found good in every writing and then tried to nudge forward, referring to the rubric and examples we had shared together.
What I wasn’t prepared for is how much the students welcomed this. I could see the dread in their faces as I called each one over, but more than one nodded as they read my suggestions and a couple even responded, “Yeah, I was thinking I should have added some dialogue.” After re-working her story, one student came to me to say, “Thank you for helping me make my writing better. I really liked your suggestions!” Another thanked me for the compliments on her work. She said, “I know teachers lie when they say it’s good, but thanks for saying it anyway.” I assured her I don’t lie in my comments and that those compliments were genuine. She was pleasantly surprised and really poured herself into making the necessary improvements.
This system of grading we’ve been using has led us to this point: where teachers feel badly about “giving” a grade on an assignment because in many times this is the ONLY example of that sort of work the students are going to do. Today, I was able to remind myself that it doesn’t matter if conferences are next week, everything we do is working toward mastery. There is no cut-off for acquiring it (or not). This is the first narrative the students have done (and the first one I have taught in two years) and we all have room to improve.
I can already see ways to improve our rubric to better compliment the standards we are working on. I have already made notes on ways I am going to change my instruction to help the students master the skills easier and maybe faster.
All told, positive feedback made us all feel better today. It made us all want to do better. It wasn’t just the students who benefited from positive, constructive feedback, I did as well. And we are all the better for it.
Teaching at 3am 