Those few moments right before class are nice. The vibe is relaxed. It’s like sitting with someone in a recital hall with a loved one, just talking, waiting for the concert to begin.
Sometimes I poke fun at someone about their weird ass name and if it is going to change or not. The kids always get into that topic. Sometimes they say inappropriate things, because they don’t yet understand how to be in a social group. I correct them so that they can understand.
During this wonderful time as we get ready to share a fun time of speaking French with each other, some of the more shy kids prefer to pick up one of the FVR books and read it quietly while they are waiting for class to start. That’s fine too. We’re just hanging out. We usually get class started withing five minutes of when we’re supposed to. It’s nice to not have bells. That would mess up our easy discussion and make us feel like we were in a school.
I work hard on liking my kids in those moments before class. In those moments before class there is a feeling of happiness. I’m in the presence of people whom I really care about. They feel that. It is a very good thing because it sets a tone that lasts the entire class period. How nice it must be for them feel valued like that before class.
If a kid comes in tardy I tell them how happy I am to see them. I welcome them. I encourage the class to welcome them. If they come in late all the time, however, I call their parents, which usually fixes the problem. The one thing that I do NOT do when they are tardy is get upset. It ruins the mood of the class that we have been sitting there cultivating as we get ready to start our time being happy together.
I don’t like to get upset. It doesn’t help me become happier. The grade book used to be such a big thing with a lot of what seemed to be very important, very serious, work required from me. Every time I signed in to my gradebook I used to have a feeling that I had to keep up with a lot of data. I believed that if I didn’t keep up with it, something bad would happen. With my gradebook before, I always felt like I was running after a bus that I had missed.
Now, I know that nothing bad will happen. As long as my employers see those little quiz grades in there on that ten point rubric, they are happy. I admit that I don’t always label my activities as quizzes. Sometimes, when at the end of class the kids have easily translated a really easy passage that we had just spent 40 minutes on in class using the Additions to Option A sequence, I label it in the grade book under the heading “reading test”. Just in case.
Don’t tell anybody that I called a quiz a test. My favorite grade book heading is “dictée” because it’s a French word so it sounds impressive to an administrator. And there is also “story quiz 1” and “story quiz 2” and also “free write” and “free read” (yes I sometimes give a point a minute for a ten minute FVR session – but the kids have to be reading to get the points).
I know that my administrators, if they go into my gradebook remotely, which they don’t have time to do, are impressed by my grade headings. Don’t tell anyone that all they really do is reflect easy work. No project grades, no big test grades, no big deal. They’re just kids, and most of them don’t put their hearts into projects and big tests. They don’t care enough. Their dad might be beating them at home, or they may have nothing to eat, or no computer to work on at home.
I also don’t put any energy into assigning and grading such work, because my students, my particular student population, doesn’t care about it and more than half of them don’t do that kind of forced work in any of their classes anyway. All that projects and big tests do is create all kinds of extra work for the teacher.
Numbers can never describe children. Besides, if we see that a kid who does really fine work in class has a B, we will overide it and make it an A. Or am I the only one who has ever done that?
Projects and big tests are a 20th century thing anymore than they can describe pictures of hats, or flowers. Projects and big tests punish kids for not doing work that they don’t care about. I really like grading kids on work that they care about, the work we do in class.
Doing those easy assessments at the end of class when the information is fresh in their minds makes them successful and that makes them want to continue and that makes our department much, much stronger and that greatly improves our job security.
For years and years I was living in a fear dream. I thought that my grade book had to be full of really accurate numbers to prove to someone that I was a good teacher. But now, I see that I am much more accurate on grades when I just report what I see going on in their eyes in class.
Besides, I’m not a good teacher. I don’t even want to be a good teacher. I just want to enjoy working with my kids, shoulder to shoulder, on their getting more and more confidence in their ability to live life, a little more every day. I can do that now because I have comprehensible input. I have woken up from a dream.
It seems so odd how we bitch and complain about how data driven everything is now, and how it costs us in so many ways, in terms of instructional time while it increases the distance between ourselves and our students, making them seem less human and more like numbers to us, and yet, when we are asked to gather mountains of data in our grade books, we just say nod our heads and say yes without giving it a second thought.
Don’t tell anyone any of this. My purpose is to work on building positive relationships with my students. I can no longer find fault with them. The tardy issue and the gradebook issue, the old way of thinking that I had to take a tough stance on tardies and grades, I don’t believe in it anymore.
I wish I could put into words, after all these years, what it feels like to just like my kids, speak to them in French, laugh as much as possible, even if the building is in overall pain, honoring them and their hard lives. I just want to forget all that silly stuff that I used to think defined teaching. I don’t think it does. Not really. Not any more.
In my new way of thinking about my job:
The old term class is more accurately termed a get together. The old term grade book is more accurately termed a quiz storage system. The old term tardies is more accurately termed a we’re glad you’re here statement. The old term starting class on time is more accurately termed starting class when we are ready. The old term introducing class to the work for the day with a serious look on my face is more accurately termed hanging out until we start speaking directly in L2. The old term lesson plan is more accurately termed a CI session. The old term projects is more accurately termed no projects because they are useless. The old term forced output is more accurately termed no forced output because it is more than useless it is also stupid and contradicts current research.