Dear Student: Rethinking Assignment Deadlines

Dear Student,

I realize that your life is complicated.

I know you have family commitments. I know your mom and dad fight or maybe they don't because you don't have one or either. I know you might live with grandma or big brother or foster mom and things can be busy. I know that even if you are fortunate enough to live with your biological parents who are happily married, they might be stressed and yell at you for no reason. They may have high expectations for you and expect everything to be done a certain way and it drives you crazy and you are simply trying to reach their goals for you.

The Art of Presenting

Over the last two days, my students have been presenting their ideas from the environment project they've been doing that was described in this blog entry. As I sat watching their presentations, I was struck by how lightly most took the presentation portion of their project. I started to think about why. I wondered if it was because I did not stress the importance of doing a good job or because they didn't think I was serious when I told them they had to memorize their Spanish sentences.

Granted, this was the first time I have done this project with my students so I wasn't really sure what I was looking for or expecting. I admit that my directions were not clear nor specific. I did inform the students that they should each say two sentences in Spanish and as much English as they wanted. I directed them that they should tell what their idea for helping the environment was, where that idea came from and how it will help people.

The Most Loathed Question of my Classroom

Being that I teach a "foreign" language in an ego-centric country that does not stress the importance of taking part in other cultures but boasts of being "the melting pot"- one would think that the most loathed question I could hear would be "does it have to be in Spanish?" I understand this question because it is steeped in the acculturation of "american" students growing up in the post 9-11 era.

No, the question I most loathe is: Is this going to be graded? Every time I hear it, it grates on my nerves. I've heard it at least once a week since I began teaching and I believe back in the early days of my career I was annoyed by it for very different reasons. There were many times I would bite back a sarcastic "what do you think, dummy? It's school." But other times,  I would answer "obviously" with an annoyed tone and an internal eye roll.

Every Page is an Adventure

Every day, I sit at my desk or in the library or at my table at home and I read. I read for an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less, but on average an hour a day. A lot of people do this. They read the paper. They read a book. They read online websites or journals or blogs or Facebook entries. Me? I read my students.

I sit for an hour a day and read their journals. I have had students journaling for two years and two months and never have I enjoyed reading them more than I do now. I sit and open my Chromebook. I open my journal spreadsheet and scroll down to the lines of the students I'm reading that night. I pick up a journal and open it to the correct place. I scroll through their line in my spreadsheet to see what comments I've made in the past and to remind myself of their writing goal. Each of them chose a writing goal a few weeks back. Common goals are: add more details, expand my vocab, write more or organize my thoughts. I review their goal so I know what I'm looking for and then I push the Chromebook aside and read. I flip the pages and check to make sure all the entries are there but I read.

I'm surprised.

Journaling Year Three

There are many things that I considered over the summer for how to improve my journaling system now that we are into year three.

HANDWRITTEN VS DIGITAL

The first thing I wrestled with over the summer was how I wanted my students to be writing. I had to decide whether I still wanted to keep to hand written composition notebook journals or if I wanted to go digital with them. I knew I'd have the Chromebooks in my classroom and wasn't sure if I wanted to move them digitally as well. It took nearly all summer for me to really decide. In the end, I still feel there is something very valuable about the process of physically writing. This is a hilarious notion since I'd much rather type than write but there are sometimes when I'm journaling or writing that I prefer handwriting. It's almost cathartic or hypnotic to put pen to paper. Additionally, I think if they were digital the temptation of Google Translate would be even greater than when they are writing "old school". So I asked my students to get a composition notebook. This differed because the previous year I'd let my students find any type of journal they wanted. Some had very pretty books or "diary" type books which I liked because it was personal to them. However the reality is that if they are uniform in shape and size, it's easier to transport them when I need to take them home. So I asked for composition notebooks only. However there are several students who purchased flashier composition notebooks with designs so they can still be personal.

Goobric Schmoobric

So as with any technology, some things are good and some are bad and some are simply not as functional as you'd like them to be.


For example the Doctopus script has an additional feature you can activate called Goobric, which is a google rubric. You define what the categories are and how many points it is worth and it will create a fill in rubric that will pop up when you are at a document that requires the goobric you assigned it previously. It's a great in theory but I spent more time grading using goobric than I did when I just used my own excel chart.


The problem with Goobric, and that I wish they would fix, is that you can open the rubric and fill in the grades but if you click out of it to back to the document, you lose whatever you've filled in. I like to grade for one thing at a time and this will not allow you do that. Furthermore, I unclicked the "email grade to student" and it still sent the email to the student. I also discovered that if you have more than one file open, sometimes it assigns the rubric to the wrong assignment so students received grades that weren't even theirs. So that was the end of goobric for me! It was irritating.


I wanted something that would help speed up my grading process, not annoy me whilst doing it. That brings me to my other issue with technology: because they can produce so much more while typing, I find I have way more to read/correct/comment on. It's quicker because I can type comments much faster (and neater) than I could ever write comments, but the volume of grading I have to do is so much more than years past. It's crazy!

September 14, 2013

I had originally started keeping my Chrome journey in a doc file but I decided to switch to a blog, don't know why but then I could share it out with people I suppose. I thought perhaps my fellow Chrome compadres might like it. Who knows? Or just for my own crazy amusement.

So Thursday and Friday were the first days that I had the kids pick up their CBs (henceforth meaning Chromebooks) on the way in the door.

This really is making me plan like a first year teacher again because I have to rethink how I do things. Last year, and every year for the past few years, I've had unit packets. I photocopy it in the beginning of the unit and then have all the copying done for three or four weeks. I think it was around year three that I had that brilliant idea and it eased up my life so much. So this year, for the first two units, I naturally photocopied the units but now as I plan, I find that a lot of it is not needed, or needed differently since they can access things digitally.