A few years ago I read Frank McCourt's Teacher Man for the first time. I re-read it two summers ago, for inspiration. Now, I feel like I'm living it.
Out of 17 college freshman who took a grammar quiz on the parts of speech (you know: noun, verb, etc.), only 4 of them passed. They really and truly had no idea what a preposition is. Or an adverb. Or an article.
I am stumped, outraged, horrified, saddened, and a number of other adjectives (those are words that describe a noun, in case you're keeping track). How can this be? How did they graduate from high school?
In class I'm dealing with personalities and behavior that are detrimental to learning anything. I am practicing classroom management, which I haven't had to do since I taught in a Korean hakwan. It's a balancing act: this is college, but some of these folks are still acting like it's 8th grade, so I have to get them to act like the grown-ups they are, but in the service of learning what they need to learn. I'm not there to hold their hands or help them count their lunch money. At the same time, apparently every other teacher, administrator and tutor has let them down in the past. It's my job to make sure they get everything - EVERYTHING - they need in order to succeed. I'm not responsible for their success, but it is my job, my desire, my fervent drive to help them find the best parts of themselves that will allow them to succeed.
This is, to borrow from the Peace Corps, the toughest job I'll ever love. And that's just it - I think I love it. Of course we've just begun, and by the end of the semester I may be as relieved as the students that it's over.
But in the meantime, I have to teach them parts of speech. I scrapped the planned lesson for Friday and we went over the quiz, and reviewed more of the basics. I am giving them a one-time-only re-do of the quiz on Monday. Not the same quiz, obviously, but the same kinds of questions. And then I have to get to the business of teaching the paragraph, and how to be a college student.
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