Dilemma In the Classroom

Here is my dilemma: I want to teach my students, but I also want to keep my job. To those of you not in education, that probably doesn’t sound like much of a dilemma at all. I am a teacher. My job is to teach. So, if I am teaching, then keeping my job should be a given, right? Those of you in education know how wrong that assumption can be.

My most challenging class—the most challenging class in all my years of teaching—are sophomores. They are my son’s age. In some ways, this makes the class even more difficult. I know my son. Not only did I raise him, I homeschooled him for a year and a half during the pandemic. I am well acquainted with what he is capable of in terms of reading and writing. In the narrative my brain creates when I’m not paying enough attention, he is representative of his age group. Since he can not only read but discuss novels such as It by Stephen King, shouldn’t all fifteen year olds be engaging with similar novels? Since he can easily write a rough draft of a formulaic five paragraph literary analysis in one block, shouldn’t my students be able to do the same? If he can make random connections between what he’s reading in class and his own life or historical events, shouldn’t that come easy to everyone? No. No. And no. 

My son, I need to remind myself, is a product of me. The poor child had to suffer through Shakespeare in utero. I read to or with him every night until he was eleven. During the pandemic, we did free writing for thirty minutes every day because we were grieving and it was the best form of therapy we could access. And until recently, I would not permit my son to watch a movie until he read the book, and then, while watching the movie we’d compare both versions of the story. My son grew up in a literacy rich environment where words were nearly as vital as oxygen. It is completely unfair and unreasonable of me to compare my students to him. So, what is a reasonable expectation?

Honestly, I wish I knew. Logic states that my tenth grade students should be reading at a tenth grade level. Right? I mean, in a world dictated by common sense, students should not be promoted until they reach certain levels of competency. If you don’t know how to process words from Dr. Seuss you’ll never be able to comprehend Doctor Zhavago. Right? Or is that too revolutionary of an idea? I’m beginning to wonder if it might be.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter where my students are, or what their baselines skills might be. Regardless of whether or not they are reading on a tenth grade level, a seventh grade one, or lower, they are expected to read The Great Gatsby through a critical lens. However, t did not take me long before I realized that the students in this one particular class were going to have a great deal of difficulty with the text.

Problem number one: The students don’t read. For some of them they absolutely refuse to put in the time and effort required to not only read, but to process, annotate, and engage with the narrative. As for the others, I’m not entirely sure they can do what I’ve asked of them. So here’s my question, the one I’ve been begging for someone to answer, how do you teach English to kids who downright refuse—or are legitimately unable—to read? Back in the day, we knew how to cheat, to circumvent the system, but those methods still involved a degree of reading. My father was always nostalgic about classic comics when recounting his years in high school. He had no interest in reading Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations. Instead, he read the comics. According to him, they were true to the plot, but they didn’t have any of that fluffy or flowery language that bored him. When I was in school—and boy did I hate to read when I started high school—I’d stop off at the bookstore on my way home and flip through the Cliff Notes, reading the summaries of each chapter. It was not enough for me to do well in my freshman year, but it was enough to pass. Today, students won’t even do that. And they have it easier. They can access Sparknotes online. So tell me, how do I devise effective  lessons when I can rely on so few students to read? 

Problem number two: This year, the district is promoting group work. Every year of education brings new buzz words in an attempt to rectify noted problems in education. The administrators, when they walk into our classrooms, want to see students working together in small groups, each person assigned an individual task. Questions we ask, questions meant to engage students in discussion and assess how well they understand the material, are expected to encourage higher level thinking. To fit this model, I break my students into groups where I instruct them to take turns reading to each other. I also hand out worksheets so students know what they are supposed to pay attention to and annotate in the novel. I review the worksheets and my expectations with the students, and I always end with, “Is that clear? Does it make sense? Do you have any questions?”

No one ever raises their hand, asks for clarification, or tells me that they have no idea what I want. What follows is silence? I kid you not. Silence so thick, so complete, that if an ant were to crawl across the floor, I would hear it. I have never—and I mean never—experienced a class where students did not talk. They don’t even talk about anything off topic. They don’t talk about last week's football game or the video games they play. They don’t even gossip about their peers. There is no talking whatsoever—can you imagine? In another universe, the silence might be construed as a blessing, but not here where group work and meaningful discussions are required.

Last week, as I circled the room, I noticed heads bent over books, but rarely did anyone actually turn a page. So I asked several students, “Are you reading or just staring at the page?” Most of them responded, “I’m just staring.” I am not making this up or exaggerating. I swear I am not. Seriously, I applaud their honesty, but how do I combat the apathy?

I read to them. Every day, I read part of the chapter and asked them to follow along in their books. I pause periodically to ask questions, some more basic than others. For instance, I asked after reading the paragraph that contained the answer, “What is Jay Gatsby’s real name?” Nothing. Not a single hand went up. So I called on a few students, all of whom shook their heads and said they didn’t know, despite the fact that I just read it to them. How do I get them to pay better attention, to listen, and read along. How do I get them to care, to develop a more positive relationship with reading?

Yesterday, I was discussing Chapter 8 with my students. I started out asking the higher level questions the administrators want to see, questions connected to the annotations the students were in the process of doing. Again, I was met with blank stares and confusion, until one student—the best in the class—raised her hand and said, “I read the chapter, but I don’t really know what happened. When I read, my eyes read the words, but my brain doesn’t process them.” Immediately, most of the class started nodding their heads in agreement. Clearly, this one student wasn’t alone. Clearly, higher level questions and reading through a critical lens were skills they might not entirely be ready for. I needed to circle back to the basics, the foundational skills they apparently never learned.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped away from my original lesson plan and invited my students into my very messy, confused, neurodivergent brain. I may have multiple graduate degrees, a book to my name, and an unquenchable desire to read, but that doesn’t mean reading is easy. I still struggle at times with comprehension, predominantly because my attention span is short, my mind loves taking random detours, and I often forget what happened at the start of a paragraph by the time I reach the end. All of this contributes to countless times when my eyes are reading words but my brain is not processing them. (In some ways, I am not all that different from my students.) So, what do I do when that happens? How do I become aware that my mind has wandered? And when awareness hits, how do I return my thoughts to the text? How do I recover what I might have missed?

I opened Gatsby, told the students to meet me on a particular page, and I modeled for them the confusion I feel, how I get myself back on track, and the sort of questions I ask myself in order to make it all make sense. I even demonstrated how I rely heavily on real world connections, the way in which my own experiences speak to the text in order to gain a better understanding of what is happening. In short, I showed them exactly how I help my brain process the words my eyes read.

While in the middle of this in-depth exploration of how to better process and comprehend a text, the head principal walked into my room with his computer to do a ten minute informal observation. The result was demoralizing and discouraging. There I was identifying a weakness in my students and trying to reach them. Trying to reinforce foundational skills they should have acquired years ago so that they might become better—or at the very least—more intentional—readers. But the principal only saw what I wasn’t doing. He began his written comments with: “None of the listed instructional focuses were clearly evident. The lesson did not demonstrate the intentional use of Assessments, higher order questioning (introductory level.), or purposeful student discussion.” 

Actually, the entire lesson was derived from my assessment of the students. By assessing them repeatedly, it was apparent that they are unable to comprehend what they read. I began by asking higher level questions, questions that were handed out on a worksheet. Unfortunately, they were questions that the students were unable to answer because how can anyone respond to more complex questions when they do have the ability to comprehend what they are reading? As for meaningful discussion, how do you force that on students who not only don’t understand what they read, but who also don’t engage in conversation—ever? I may not have been doing what the administration wanted me to do, but their expectations—in my opinion—were not realistic for the class I see every day. The students I’ve been working with all year. I’m the one who knows my students, the one who sees their struggles, the one who after many failed attempts to do what “I’m supposed to do,” realized that unless I took many steps backward, I would never be able to successfully move the students forward.

Here is my dilemma: I want to teach my students, but I also want to keep my job. What would you do if you genuinely cared about your students and wanted to help them, wanted to ease some of their struggles and perhaps remove some of their obstacles to learning, but you also relied on your paycheck, needing it to survive? What do you do when an outsider tells you what he thinks is best based on district mandates, but your experience informs a completely different perspective? If a child stumbles and falls every time they try to walk, how can they run? My students need to develop their foundational skills. I can help them to do that. It may be a long, slow, tedious process, but in the end, they will benefit. But not if I’m forced to forgo their needs in order to satisfy lofty—dare I say unrealistic—curricular goals.