Chalkdust

When my school put in new copy machines 18 months ago, everyone was assigned an account number. As a result, the administration knows exactly how many copies each teacher has made. Last week they sent the faculty an email about the quantity of paper we use each month. They didn’t release the names of individual teachers who are Heavy Users, but they did mention that the Top User had made more than 101,000 copies in 18 months. An assistant principal went around to the Top 20 Users to make sure they knew their status.

The initial response by the faculty was to guess at who the Number 1 User is. Then everyone wanted to know where they stood in comparison to others. In the third wave, we started to reflect on what this data means.

A colleague and I discussed it Friday afternoon. She was one of the Top 20, and she was unhappy to have been visited by the assistant principal. “I covered a class for Mr. M—–,” she said, “and I found out that my total student count is 45% higher than his. Of course I’m going to use more paper.”

Her comment points to the danger of releasing data without a context. All of the teachers who asked were given their total usage, but if we’re not in the Top 20, we don’t know where we stand. The assistant principal would only say vaguely, “You’re about in the middle” or “That’s on the low side.” We don’t know how many copies per student our total represents. We don’t know what a typical number of copies would be, compared to other teachers with our same student load, compared to other teachers in our department, compared to other schools in our region, demographic, or state.

Much of what we do in education, business, and politics purports to be data-driven. Pie charts, bar graphs, and scatter charts are the new “‘rithmetic” expected of students. Those numbers, however, need to be subjected to the same healthy skepticism we give to the things we read online.

Because we have computers and can generate data effortlessly, we do. We should remember, though, that without a rich context, the numbers might not be telling us anything valuable at all.

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“I don’t like to read unless it’s something that I’m interested in,” he said almost apologetically as we browsed the stacks looking for a book about — I don’t remember now — about hunting or dirt bikes or football. He seemed surprised when I answered, “I’m the same way.”

“I only like certain kinds of books,” she said, looking for something with vampires that she hadn’t already read. Remembering my own days as a picky reader, I left her to her friends, and they found something she later pronounced “good.”

I’ll confess to making it through all of the Harry Potter books, but mostly I’m just not interested in reading the books my students enjoy. Lately my taste runs to nonfiction. As a result, I don’t recommend books I like to my students. I might get a few of the more sophisticated readers through a chapter of Superfreakonomics, but Malcolm Gladwell? Nah.

So while I have a professional familiarity with, say, the Twilight series and Ted Dekker’s thrillers, I haven’t read them. I am learning to make crowdsourcing work for me, instead. Give the kids a way to discuss their reading, and they’ll guide each other. (I use the forum module on Moodle and am about to embark on a high school version of literature circles.)

How do you feel about reading the books that interest your students? How do you maintain a working knowledge of what interests them? What are you reading now (nonprofessional) just for yourself?

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I had told my students on Monday what their grades were, but some spent a couple of days suspended between disbelief (“It can’t really be that good”) and denial (“It can’t really be that bad”) before receiving their report cards today.

Jacob was pleased with his results. “I done real good in your class,” he announced. I had to smile at the irony.

When we talk about assessments, there it is: the grade on his report card says one thing, but his speech says something entirely different.

It has always been that way. And so it goes.

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My school offers dual credit classes through an arrangement with a local community college. Last year we expanded into junior English by offering American Lit for college credit. We knew it was “iffy” — the local community college would offer it in the fall, but if they didn’t have enough students to fill a section, we weren’t allowed to have a section — but we offered it, and students signed up.

This fall, however, their section didn’t fill. We are scrambling to see if a different regional campus will work with us, and I’m keeping the kids posted on status. Since our school started ahead of the college, I have been teaching our regular college-bound curriculum instead of the collegiate one, but we are reaching a point at which I have to go one way or the other.

Today I mentioned that fact in class and said, “I don’t think it’s fair to make you do college-level work if you’re not getting college credit.”

The room became very quiet, and then one girl spoke up. “I think it would be good experience for us and would help us when we get to college.” Well, that was one voice. I looked around the room. They were nodding.

“Are you sure?” I asked. The nodding continued.

“Well … OK … Scarlet Letter, here we come!”

As I turned to close the classroom door, I would have sworn I heard someone say, “The Scarlet Letter? I’ve always wanted to read that!”

It’s going to be a great year!

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