From the "I am NOT Making This Up" Department...

We've had several visitors at our school over the past few weeks while colleges have been on break between semesters. I was standing on the sidelines at an athletic event after school one day, cheering on the team, when suddenly a young man stepped up next to me. Then he hugged me and said he wanted to thank me.

He looked vaguely familiar, but it took me a few seconds to recognize the face. It was young Barbarino, who had been one of my students in one of my honors classes the first year I was at the high school after leaving the middle school. I had also had him as a student at the middle school. Neither of these experiences had been particularly pleasant, as he had been a young man more prone to complaints than getting his work done.

From the second he set foot in my class, it was a contest of wills. He wasn't going to do the reading. He wasn't going to do the essays-- or at least, he wasn't going to do them except on the back of a cocktail napkin, written in ketchup. He complained that I didn't explain everything in the book so that he wouldn't have to read it, since reading was a waste of his time. He made weird noises. He wanted to put his head down all the time. He maintained a 57% average all the way through the semester, and then finally scraped enough together that he got a 60 percent -- a D minus. And yet, he wouldn't transfer to another class, either. For some reason, he didn't want to be rescued, but he didn't want to pull his own weight, either.

I got some insight into his problem when his mom came up for conferences. All she talked about was his older sister, who was pre-med and had gotten straight As and been drum major while volunteering at an adult day-care center, and on and on. During the entire conference, I repeatedly tried to redirect the subject back on to her son, but to no avail. So what he wanted was to act up and get my attention, since he was a ghost to his mother. She threw up her hands at trying to get him in line, and basically let me know that school problems were the problem of the school.

But now, here he was, taller, bearded-- and um, thanking me? He told me he was in graduate school now, and he appreciated me never letting him get away with avoiding his work. He laughed uproariously at the memory of me hoisting a desk over my head in the crowded classroom to put him out in the hallway when he came to the class unprepared, which happened more than once. He thanked me for making him come to my class after school to teach him how to write historical essays. He apologized for being "such an unbearable little shit." I assured him he wasn't unbearable-- and we laughed again. He said he wanted to prove to me that he had finally grown up and was no longer a "screw-up." He said what I was trying to teach him had sunk in-- just three years later than I would have liked. He left me with a pat on the back and asked if he could come see me the next time he was on break.

I said, "Gladly."

It was an amazing experience.

Why should there be remedial classes in college?

When it comes to college, being accepted is hardly the first step. Many of our students get a rude awakening when they arrive there, when they find that their grades from high school don't match their skills that they are expected to use to succeed in college. I found this article from the San Francisco area East Bay Daily News just fascinating:

What students learn in high school and what they need to know for college doesn't always match up, according to a national survey of high school and college instructors.

Teachers at all levels value organized, coherent writing from their students. But college professors more often rated punctuation as paramount, the study says, while high school teachers placed more importance on developing a topic and writing a great introductory paragraph.

In math, high school teachers labeled higher level subjects like calculus as a priority.

"What college teachers say is they want students with a firm grasp of the basics," said Cynthia Schmeiser, president and chief operating officer of the education division at ACT, a college entrance exam company.

The survey results released today might help explain why community colleges and universities send so many freshman to remedial classes.

Nationwide, 28 percent of incoming freshman enrolled in remedial college classes, according to a 2004 report by the National Center for Education Statistics.

In the California State University system, nearly half of the incoming freshman this year scored below proficient in English on placement tests that determine what level of courses students should take. More than a third fell short of being college-ready in math.

"Yes indeed, we do a large amount of remedial and developmental amount of work - more than we would like," said James Murphy, chairman of the English department at California State University, East Bay.

This year, less than half showed up at Cal State East Bay ready for college math while less than 60 percent of incoming freshman tested at remedial levels in English. Out of necessity, the school runs what are known as developmental writing classes to help get students up to speed.

"Not that we don't think it's important, but it would be nice if could be done somewhere else," Murphy said.

In the state community college system, the largest in the United States, more than 300,000 students ended up in remedial classes last school year, according to a March accountability report.

Read the whole thing. And by the way, who can spot the grammatical error (it appears twice) in the article?

I remember back when I was a brand new English teacher. I was told that the LATEST THING in English language arts instruction was a system whereby one simply tried to encourage students to write, and one didn't try to "discourage" them with learning and utilizing nasty things like correct spelling, punctutation and the like. Now our students were supposed to use the "writing process," which included proofreading and editing either one's own work or someone else's work, but how can a student do that when that student doesn't know what to look for? The papers ended up being far more e. e. cummings than anything else, but without any poetry. Of course, you know I nodded my head sweetly at my principal, went into my room, closed the door, and started drilling comma splice correction and gerunds into my students' heads.

I felt so subversive!

I was A Rebel With a Clause.

My students often grumble about the fact that, as a social studies teacher, I correct (and dock the grade accordingly) for spelling, punctuation, and the like. I will tell you this curmudeonly insistence upon proper writing skills does make grading essays a much more laborious process than I would like, as well.

Well, what do you see in your classrooms? I'd like to do a completely unscientific survey.