New Haven Independent

June 9, 2006

Today is the last full day of classes. Next we have two weeks of half days, for which I hope the least number of students possible shows up. After exams, which are next week, there’s really no need for them to come to school. We have a few activities planned, but all-in-all, once next week is over, the school year is too.

I am swamped with typing. I’ve asked all my students to give me what they consider to be their best writing from the year for me to post online. Many students have given this project a great deal of thought and have put considerable effort into revising their pieces. But the ones who didn’t care too much about literature or organizing their work or doing homework are finding this last project very difficult to complete. Lots of kids are creating things off the tops of their heads, and I have to decide whether or not to put their work online. If I’ve asked them to give me their best piece of writing all year, and a student wants to create something right now, without me ever having seen it, then I don’t see it as authentic. I feel that to honor those students who have worked so hard through the year, I don’t want to post anything that’s slapped together at the last minute.

As teachers, we make thousands of decisions every day. It seems I spend most of my time deciding about how to make things fair. Anyone who teaches K-12 will know that one of the things kids pick up on more than anything else is fairness.
“Why can’t I do it but so-and-so can? That’s not fair!”
“Why did she get a 90 and I only got an 85 and we had the same answer! That’s not fair!”
“Mike got to go to the bathroom but I can’t. That’s not fair!”

I’m kind of sick of hearing those three little words…But I have to admit that I’m a better teacher because of my kids’ nagging about fairness. When I make decisions now, it is to keep my classroom a fair playing field. Those kids who gripe about some of my decisions not being fair are the same ones who will hear me say, upon not seeing their work online, “It’s not fair to the other students who worked hard through the year to have their work up online next to work that hasn’t had the same attention paid to it. It’s not fair for last-minute work to go up next to work that has very thoughtfully been drafted, revised, and published.”

So the website is up and running, with more writing added daily as I get the work in from my students. It’s important to both me and my students that people go look at their writing and leave feedback. As I’m entering my students’ writing, I am impressed by the variety of work up there. It is kind of a selfish project for me, too, because each of these pieces I remember students working on in my class. I remember giving precise feedback to each one of them and I remember students reading them aloud in class. This is a nice collection of memories of teaching for me.

For my students, it is a display of their best work. I want to tell readers of the posts that their writing isn’t perfect. I want to tell readers to remember that these kids are just kids—that their writing isn’t writing that’s going to change the world. But it might. So many of my students have come so far in their abilities. I have students for whom English is not their first language who have posted incredibly moving pieces online. (Perhaps they are more moving for me as a reader since I know the writers themselves.) I have students who were afraid to write anything on a page because they didn’t want to be wrong, and I have students who refused to use their voices in class because they didn’t want people to make fun of them. Their writing is up there, too. And it is writing that is full of love for other people and I am proud of them.

Some of my students are natural writers. For others, writing is a huge challenge—one that I can’t really understand since it comes to easily to me. But the work that is online now is work that is important to my students, to me, and could very well be important to others in the world. I hope people will read their work and leave feedback. Click here to read it.