Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
This week of blank stares & disaffected teenagers has been  tough one, one that makes me reconsider teaching high school

"There is one thing you need to make sure that you include in your essay: connection to the real world . It's time to go beyond the literature and into the real world, like we did in our discussion last week. You need to take what ruined Macbeth's life, what caused him to kill, and connect that with a troy that you are familiar with." I said to my class two weeks ago, emphasizing its importance and underlining important words on the board. When I had finished my two minute tirade I glanced out hoping to see students taking notes but was instead met with  blank stares (some slackjawed with eyes glazed over - just short of drooling- two minutes was apparently too much direct instruction). I let the silence hang for a minute and whispered "you should probably write this down." One or two students moved which dragged a handful of other students out of their stupor and caused them to ask their neighbors what was going on. As 1/2 the class slowly scribbled down the short notes (the other half not yet aroused from their daydream) I stared into this future pool of humanity and sighed.

Flash forward two weeks into the future. It is essay deadline day, and looking back I feel like I have taught these students, as best I know how, what they need to do to create a strong essay. I repeated instructions and tips for roughly two weeks, at least twice a day. WE brainstormed ideas together and they made connections in their notebooks. I created an online discussion board that students shared ideas on to ensure they were headed in the right direction. I handed out examples of an essay that successfully did what I was asking, and together we broke down the elements of the argument (I wrote the examples myself because I had not taught it before). I organized students into groups to check for this concept in each others papers. I put the students through workshops to make sure that they had honed this concept in their essays.  I gave students several hours to write and work in class. These are all of the most effective techniques that I have learned to create a successful community of writers from some of the best teachers in San Diego County, and yet upon reading these essays (now three weeks in the making) I see that it was not enough. Half of the students never included what we discussed, and to put it bluntly, their papers suck!

Sure you could argue that they have been undereducated for so many years before, and they come from poorer families, which make them much less likely to succeed. They are part of a digital age which makes focusing on an essay much less easy. It could even be argued that because I am a new teacher I am destined to be much less effective at teaching writing to my studetns. I will grant that these reasons contribute to some students poor acheivment (except the last one, my teaching is flawless -ha), but it's an explanation that just feels lacking. It seems the problem goes deeper. This poor acheivement seems to stem from one of our culture's major flaws. It seems that these students, who plan to go to college and become well paid business professionals, are living the new version of the American dream, one that tells Americans something comes from nothing. A dream that allows them to have the world handed to them without having to work for it. There are many contributing factors: doting parents, poor role models (think popular musicians, movies, and even business professionals) lack of consequesnces for bad decisions (invincibilty of being a teen), irrelevant teaching etc. etc. I am not so concerned with searching out the blame, but I am very interested in searching out the cause and combating it using the education system. What are teachers doing to battle apathy? How can these subdivided separately assessed skills be affixed, in a meaningful way, into studetns lives? How can we team up with other organizations to change the culture of the sutdetns who attend our schools?

Big questions without immeadiate answers. But I suppose the fact that I am willing to ask after this week, shows that I stilll care about teaching. We'll see if I feel the same way after reading all of the essays! ARGH!