Sex on the Board

About once a week I have a mental debate regarding whether or not I am a crappy teacher. It’ll start with a thought like, “Wow, I really am lazy,” or “Wow, that was a waste of time,” and it will end with thoughts like, “Is anyone learning anything from me?” To my mind, this weekly self-evaluation is not only helpful but vital. Any teacher who doesn’t question, “Why am I doing this; is any good coming from this,” is probably a poor teacher. Those who openly brag about being an awesome teacher often come up short. A small dose of self-criticism is important in this profession.

My own reflection on my skills as a teacher usually involves this incident. This story is evidence to confirm that I am either a great teacher or an awful one.

The first concepts we tackle in my classroom are writing skills, specifically how to craft an argument in essay form. It’s taken me years to develop an objective strategy that I can give to students because writing is complex and should not fall into a formula. But, I’ve found a way to eliminate as much of the gray as I can for my blossoming writers. Students aren’t specific enough, and they never elaborate or explain their information. A typical beginning-of-the-year eighth grade paragraph reads like this:

“Facebook is very important to students. Students need Facebook to survive their day. Without Facebook, most students are very bored. It keeps their lives interesting. That is why Facebook is necessary.”

Or:

“Facebook is very important to students. More than ninety percent of students use Facebook. Only ten percent say they don’t use Facebook. Facebook has lots of advantages for students. That is why Facebook is necessary.”

The former example, which is my impersonation of an eighth grader, has no actual specific information; it’s redundant. The latter, also my re-creation, has some specific information, but it isn’t fleshed out, and it too is redundant as a result. This led me to my “pattern” for a body paragraph. They start with a topic sentence, then have at least three specific examples that they must explain, and a transition or concluding sentence. And that pattern is what I was teaching on this particular school day.

I write on a Smartboard to give notes rather than a whiteboard or chalkboard. As I wrote these notes on this particular day, students copied them into their notebooks, on special goldenrod paper. Anything they write on this goldenrod-colored paper must be kept all year; “it’s as good as gold.” And in case you haven’t taught middle school, their concept of note-taking is writing verbatim whatever I write on the board, spelled the same, same order, same capitalization and underlining, everything identical.

The notes start with TS, for topic sentence, and I write a brief explanation of what this entails. Then, I write EX three times vertically to show that they need three examples. But, they have to be specific example, so I go back and write a large S in front of each example, repeating vehemently, “specific example, specific example, specific example.” Each example must be explained: Exp. The notes end with CS for concluding sentence and another brief definition.

I move to the next slide and continue to disseminate information that they diligently copy onto their “good as gold” notes. No one says a peep. There isn’t a single hand raised or question asked. I hear no giggles or muffled words under their breath. It’s been a productive lesson.

And, I do this a total of four times. Same notes, same speech, same sense of self-satisfaction at a job well done. After my fourth class, I have to go to my hall duty, to monitor students between classes. As I return to the classroom, my Smartboard is still on, and shining brightly is my slide with the pattern I’ve created. And that’s when I gasped in horror.

My board said: TS             SEX /Exp            SEX /Exp            SEX /Exp            CS

I gasped again because one distraught gasp wasn’t enough to sufficiently explain the horror I felt as seeing the word sex sprawled across my Smartboard in big red letters. Specific Example! Before anyone else saw, I punched off the projector and stared at my computer screen. Yep, I had written sex over and over again…all day. And worse yet, the students had it in their notes! On those beautiful “good as gold and keep all year” notes, they had copied my words verbatim from the Smartboard.

The situation was instantly hilarious. In addition to unknowingly turning my classroom into some kind of teen-talk environment, I had proven that I am either a fantastic teacher or perhaps the worst ever. There are two ways of interpreting my students on that day. Either, my students were so engaged and following my lesson so closely that they truly didn’t see that my pattern for their essay demanded sex (or if they did notice, they knew it was inappropriate to question the teacher so didn’t make a peep), in which case I may be the best teacher ever. Or, perhaps my students were paying absolutely no attention whatsoever and not even writing sex repeatedly could break them from their zombie boredom, making me the worst teacher ever.

I’ll never know because in my final class, I changed the notes to say “Sp Ex,” and I never again asked students in my first four classes to refer to those notes.