What If It Was Up To The Students?

I am grading my first stack of essays for the school year on this long weekend, and I can't decide what is worse--stabbing myself in the eye or reading these papers?

In fact, I don't want to grade the other stack sitting on top of my printer. Instead, I want to run far, far away and pretend this never happened. Ever.

Why such a vile reaction you ask? Try swallowing this: a class mean of 52%. That's right. Just plain ugly. 

Like every good teacher, I went back in time and considered everything I had taught up until the day they turned in their essays. I'll admit, there were things I could have done differently. In the future, I want to offer them more time in class to work on their writing, and I'd like to utilize more student-created examples (sample paragraphs written by students). I think I need to have more conferences as well so I can talk to them about what they think about their own writing.

However, as a fourth year teacher, I've never experienced such low essay scores. Either I'm a worse teacher this year, or this group is really far behind in their writing skills. And their homework-completion skills. And their self-advocacy skills. 

As teachers, we are taught that when we encounter a failing class average like this, we did something wrong, and when we do, we have to go back and re-teach those standards and skills. However, our school's pacing does not allow for that, so I'm stuck in this eternal conundrum of needing to pause but being forced to move on.

But what if it was up to the students to go back and fix their errors? 

A colleague of mine has a poster in her room with a list of all the things school does not teach students, like life is not fair and in the real world, no one cares about your feelings. It makes me laugh each time I see it, because it's so true, yet we continually do our kids a disservice because we're so damned worried about their self-esteem. In the real world, what does a person do when he/she does not understand something? Wait for the college professor in a lecture hall of 100 students to pull her aside and say, "Nancy, you look confused. Should I explain this concept in a different way?" Or better yet, does the boss walk up to Ed, stating, "Your work is below average, so I'm going to sit here and walk you through it." If that's the way the real world works, I must be missing out.

Here's my course of action: make the students fix it. If they received a C or higher, they can choose if they want to revise their essays; however, if they received a 69% or below, they must make an appointment with me during office hours to workshop their papers, then they will have a week to revise their work.

In the real world, it's not always about getting it right the first time (though that is encouraged), but about what one does upon encountering obstacles or, even worse, failure.