Lowered-Standards Program

I'm not sure if I'm kidding or not with this title. In some ways... yes. I am actually a pretty firm believer in not lowering standards for students so that we can have a higher pass-rate out of 1301. I figure that if we lower the standards much more, the kids are just wasting their money coming to college. Also, I would feel like I was pretty ineffective at my job. When I tell people that I'm an English professor one day, I want to be able to tell them that students leave my class able to write a pretty good short essay, and that they enjoy at least a little bit of reading. I think that in lower-ing standards, I will be letting the students down, and my own expectations for myself.

However, after grading for a bit this semester, I do have lowered-standards as to what I expect the students to submit. I had to realize that my expectations are not the same as the students, and every time I start grading a new kind of assignment, I feel like I have to "feel" around a few drafts before I re-adjust to what kind of work I should be expecting. But back to the original question... I had to lower my ideals for what I want the students to come in knowing. I never really hoped for an interest in reading and writing, but I was definitely expecting students to be able to identify and write a five paragraph essay. I now realize that Plan B will have to be teaching multiple levels of thinking within the same classroom. They are going to have to be taught how to structure their sentences and their essays while I'm trying to get them to form more critical thinking skills/responses. Plan B entails having the students perhaps 'intake' and 'think' about things that are at a different, higher level than what they can necessarily 'output' in their own words. However, I think that this is one of the best ways to learn, probably because this is how I learn best, myself.

For me as a teacher, I am going to have to go on the higher-standards program. I personally am not so hot at grammar, and now I realize I'm going to have to brush up on those skills. Not only that, but I am going to have to get better at articulating and explaining the smaller things that I would probably have rushed right past. I now know that I am going to have to be a much more effective communicator, and more responsive to the class, than what I was expecting. It is one thing to read the handbooks and the lesson plans, but it is a different thing to realize how to parse the information, how to form it and relay it, so that the students can really take it in and synthesize it. I guess I didn't realize that I would have to be doing this much 'shaping' of information at the level of grammar and essay structure. Somehow I figured I would get to talk about all the abstract concepts floating around in books. Plan B for me is going to be learning how to really see the students in my classroom, and really take into consideration where they are, and how my behavior will most effectively reach them.