No matter how she tries, the Independent’s schoolteacher- diarist can’t get her students to do homework.
Dec. 5, 2005
It’s the last period of the day, and for the fourth time today, I’ve had an entire group of students not do their homework, which was to read two short chapters from The Hot Zone, the non-fiction book we’re tackling. So as the day has gone on, my patience and tolerance have dwindled to next to nothing. Finally, now, at 1:45, I’m broken. I go around the room and ask each student if he or she has read the assignment.
“No.”
“Nah, Miss.”
“No.”
Head shake.
“No.”
“I read half of it.”
“I was sick.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I wasn’t here on Friday.”
“No.”
“Sorry, Miss.”
Listen. It’s a two-way street. I can’t do what I need to do if they don’t do what they need to do, right? So I tell them what they’ll do in class — “read silently to themselves. And I tell them straight-up: “I’m freaking out. You have to do your homework.” And I walk out of the room to calm myself for a second because I’m feeling so frustrated. How can sixty students not do their work? What am I doing wrong?
In the hallway is posted a newspaper clipping about young people fighting. One of the school’s directors posted a small sign above it on fluorescent paper that reads: How do we respond? What can we do? And I internalize this heading as a question that my own fluorescent soul is asking me in this moment. How do I respond to my students not doing any work? What can I do about it?
There are so few students who do work at home. I’m not sure why so many don’t. I give them homework every weekend, and, without fail, when Monday rolls around, I get next to nothing for homework completion.
So do I stop assigning work over the weekend to appease their habits? Or do I plow through with the belief that the work they have over the weekend will help them gain the skill of time management that they’ll need in college?
Today is a Searching day. Oh god, is it ever a Searching day.
Dec. 4, 2005
On Saturday I went to Boston with my friend, Gayle, from the restaurant. We went up to the Berklee Performing Arts Center to see Ray Lamontagne in concert. I have been wanting to see Ray for months now, since I first heard his album, Trouble. His voice is like nothing I’ve heard before: painful and old, though he’s got to be only in his late 20s. Again, I’m not really one to critique music in any kind of professional way, but man — ¬¶. he is incredible. The woman who opened for him, Brandi Carlisle, is also one to look out for. She’s got this great, low, unexpected voice. She walked out on stage and I was half-expecting to hear some kind of demure voice — “kind of like Eva Cassidy — “but whoa. She belted out her first couple of songs and I was hooked. And she’s only 24. She’s got two albums out, one acoustic and one with her band. When Ray came on stage, he invited her up there to sing “Hannah” with him, and their voices blended so well.
I guess I was thinking about how outside appearances don’t necessarily match what’s inside. Ray is a guy who’s so shy and soft-spoken on stage. He kept putting his hands up on his head, kind of like when things feel out of control you might put your hands on your head to keep your brain in. But his voice when he sings — “damn. It’s so rough and painful. It’s an old voice, a wise one.
Brandi, too, doesn’t match inside to outside. She’s little, kind of like me. And the guitar seems almost too big for her. So I was expecting her voice to be little, too. Nope. In some ways, she reminded me of Annie Lennox or Amy Ray from the Indigo Girls. Really intense voice.
While the intent of our trip was to go up and see Ray play, Gayle and I also wanted just to hang out and spend some time together. She’s been busy lately, having just returned from her home in England with her family; she’s also just put out another album of her own, so I haven’t seen her very much at all. We spent most of the trip up there talking, and we made reservations at Vinny Testa’s (it’s now Vinny T’s) on Boylston for dinner before the show.
While we were eating, Gayle asked how things are going with teaching. Last week was really hard for me at school, especially because it was the week after Thanksgiving break. The week after vacations seems to be the hardest. Kids don’t want to be there, teachers have just gotten used to sleeping in — So needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled about getting back into the groove.
It’s hard for me to feel successful. I guess I’m a person who thrives on positive feedback, and when I spend a significant portion of my day talking to kids about bad behavior and not doing homework and fighting with each other and getting suspended and talking back to me and to other students, it tends to wear on me. So many people have said that teaching is the most thankless job in the world because the rewards are so few and far between and they come in so many different forms and so long after you put the energy in. I think sometimes I’m lacking the positive feedback necessary for me to feel confident that I’m doing the right thing and to make me want to keep doing it.
Not only that, but I often feel like I have to search for the positive things. Over the last few years, I’ve put a lot of time, money, and effort into teaching. I buy my own books for my classroom, I buy my own supplies, I decorate the room how I want, I try to make it as comfortable as possible. I participate in professional development, I pay my student loans, I sit at home and plan and craft lessons and units for my kids to enjoy and it all takes so much time.
Mark and Marcia tell me that I’ll be lucky if I’ve made a difference in the life of just one of my students. And I won’t even know if I’ve made a difference possibly until ten years down the road. Mark told me about a time when he taught a student who he thought hated him and didn’t enjoy his class and was a bore — ¬¶. and then ten years later, that student showed up in a national publication saying that Mark had changed his life when he was a student.
What?! Well no wonder I feel disheartened at times.
So what do I expect realistically as a kind of “reward” for my effort? Gayle can get some kind of reward — “a tangible product of all of her hard work — “when she holds the CD she’s put so much effort into making. She — “and Ray and Brandi — “hear us clapping and cheering when they finish singing. Sometimes, the crowd sings with them, or shouts out loud while they’re in the middle of a song. What joy, right? That’s extra fuel to keep a person going, right? Other professionals get bonuses for doing extra hard work. Others see a rise in numbers directly proportional to their efforts. It’s that obvious instant gratification that is so missing from the field of teaching. Mostly, I feel it’s just a lot of frustration that can easily overwhelm me if I don’t make an overt effort to seek out those things — “however insignificant — “to convince myself I’m doing a good thing.
When kids ask to go to the bathroom, they frequently ask that question to take a break from class. If I choose to take their lav requests personally, it means that they’re bored with class and they’d rather be in the hallway. So, last Wednesday, when I was having one of those hard days and was in constant wonder why in the world I’m doing what I’m doing, I had to search to find a good thing. So I sat down and thought hard about the day. No one had asked to go to the bathroom. In a twisted sort of way, I could take a positive spin on the day by being grateful that no one had asked to go to the lav. Maybe that meant no one was bored. Maybe that meant that what we were doing kept them interested and that they were engaged. And that’s a good thing.
It also may have meant that they honestly didn’t need to go to the lav. But, in a moment of deep, thoughtful searching, in a moment when I needed to find something, I took it to mean that they liked class that day. And that was good enough right then.
And there are little things along the way that I need to be mindful of. Every morning, a group of three girls knocks on my door to say hello. I’m not teaching them this year because they’re sophomores and I only teach freshmen, but nonetheless, they stop by to joke around and say hello. When my class starts every day, kids like to come up and show me something they’ve written over the weekend or tell me they’ve read ahead in the book or give me the homework they caught up on. They often show their guilt about not being prepared for class by telling me a joke or by apologizing right up front. So I’m reaching them, a little, I guess. And I’ve seen improvements in behavior. Very, very, very, very slight improvements, but improvements all the same. On those Searching days, on the days when I want so badly to hear the applause and the screams and shouts and hear the people call out “I Love You, Miss Coggio!” “Thank You, Miss Coggio!” I need to start small. Bathroom usage.