negotiations

this is the promise my students make to me:
1. i will put my name on my assignments. usually. more or less.
2. i will add a date that has some numbers in common with the current date. it’s hard for me to remember exactly what day it is but you know what i mean.
3. i will write a string of words across the top of the page (more or less) that usually can be deciphered as the title you wrote clearly, in large letters, on the board. that’s right. the one you then said out loud to us once, then again a second time a few minutes later, just to be sure. come on. you know it. you wrote it on the board yourself.
4. if you have numbered questions for this assignment (like when we take a quiz) i will put numbers left of some clumps of my answer. if not, my answer will be one very spectacular sentence. three lines. thirteen lines. one sentence. i really like to use the words “and then”. i think they enhance my storytelling.
5. although i know i’m not so good at spelling (reading, organizing my thoughts), i do not want to share this news with others. even though you might have something to help me, you are in that category of others. if people know i can’t read, they will think i am stupid. and then i will have to act like i want to be stupid on purpose. that’s a lot of work. i would rather just not talk about it.
6. when you give back an assignment, i will not look at the grade (or any other marks you made) on it. i already know who i am. i already know what you think of me.

this is the promise i make to my students:
1. if there’s no name on your paper and it’s a quiz, regular homework assignment or short response, it goes in the trash. i don’t grade it and you don’t get it back. who are you anyway?
2. if there’s no name on it and it’s part of a major project, i will describe some clear feature of the work (who is writing about a superhero named stanley flash?) . one time. if you raise your hand, i will give it to you. if you write your name on it and give it back i will grade it. if you keep it, i can’t. if you don’t claim it, it goes in the trash.
3. i am very good at deciphering creative spelling. generally, i only have to ask two or three times a year about a word i can’t figure out. however, i am less talented when it comes to handwriting. if it looks like a chicken danced across your page, it will come back to you with no grade. you will be expected to fix it.
4. if the words on your page are identical to those of someone else in the class, i will not grade either assignment. ever. a big, heavy zero will go in my gradebook next to your name and that other person’s name for that assignment. those zeros will weigh you down. you will learn that using your own ideas, even if not quite right, is smarter than using someone else’s ideas that you don’t understand well enough to modify just a little.
5. if i’m reading something of yours and it sounds distinctly un-you or distinctly un-ninth gradery, i will visit the internet to see if what you’re writing has already been written before. if it has, you will learn a new word, plagiarize. it is difficult to spell. i will write “do not” in front of it when i write it on your paper. it comes with one of those leaden zeros in the gradebook. it also comes with a conference and a call home.
6. if your name is on an assignment and you have made any attempt at all to understand it and address the issue at the center of the work, i will take your work very seriously. i will write in the margins smart things you’ve done and questions i have. i will point out places where there is confusion or where i think you simply didn’t understand the point of the work. and if i think you tried but are confused, i will not put a number grade at the top. i will put the letter R. which means “revise”. and because we’ve discussed this in class, i will expect you to come to class during tutoring time (yes, it’s that not quite an hour from 2:20 to 3:10 when any child in our school can visit any teacher and ask for help). and if you ask me, we will sit down and discuss the assignment until you understand it and you can revise it as many times as you want. for you, this means eventually you will get the grade you want. for me, this means eventually you will understand the concept i’ve been trying to share with you.

negotiating is tough. we are all stubborn. the children. me. we have different goals. but they begin to dovetail right about parent-teacher conference time. i require my students to attend the conferences with their parents. well, i bribe them. i offer every child who attends with parents an opportunity to try bacon chocolate. it’s just what it says. chocolate with bacon. or, for those who don’t eat bacon, chocolate with chiles and cinnamon. or wasabi. and of the 39 families i met this week at conference time, 37 arrived with a ninth grader. having child and parent in the same room is the only way to be successful. everyone hears the same information. it is not that i worry about my students being dishonest or unclear. my experience is that the parents who come without children do not represent our conversations accurately when they get home. there is great deal more grounding and hitting. ugly.

so we sit down and a child says, angrily, “why did i get a 70? i turned everything in!” the parent looks at me accusingly, says, “i know she’s done lots of work for you.” and i look in my gradebook. out of fourteen assignments, there are quite a few of those R things. at the end of marking period those average in the same way a zero would because i do not have a complete assignment. and i explain to both child (who has heard this every day for two months) and parent about the revising and about how it is impossible to do poorly in my class unless it is willfully done. and each time the parent turns the same incredulous look toward his or her child, stares at the child like it has three heads, realizes for the first time that this is an alien creature. and then, it is always the same. very slowly, the parent grinds out these words. are…you…kidding…me? because to an adult it is absolutely unimaginable that anyone would ignore unlimited opportunity to fix an error, to gain reward. but children are so much more imaginative than adults. they can see themselves doing exactly the same thing next marking period.