Ubuntucat

I’ve been to a lot of graduation ceremonies. As a matter of fact, when I was in high school, I attended other people’s high school commencements for fun (and to support my friends, of course). Kids and parents alike are happy to be there, to celebrate the end of something, the beginning of something, or both. It’s a day to be proud. It’s a day to laugh. It’s a day of speeches.

I can’t tell you how many (high school and university) commencement speeches I’ve sat through. Too many. How many can I remember? Not many. Pretty close to not any.

I remember fragments of certain speeches. Usually someone will talk about the root of the word commencement, which has to do with beginnings, not endings. The person speaking will talk about how the people graduating are the future, they can make real change, and they should be themselves. There’s usually a funny or cute anecdote thrown in for a few laughs. The best part is when the commencement speaker says something like, “You probably won’t remember this speech, but if you have to remember one thing, remember this…”—even that one thing I was supposed to remember I don’t remember.

So do graduation speeches do any good? Are they just pretty prose? Are they just a way to fill up the time? I know my high school graduating class was little more than 100 students, so the reading of the names and handing out of diplomas certainly weren’t enough to be the whole program. They had to put those speeches in there to make it a ceremony and not just a blink of the eye.

Don’t get me wrong. If I were asked to speak at my school’s graduation, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I’d say all the regular cheesy stuff and throw in an anecdote for good measure. I just wouldn’t imagine the kids would actually remember my speech or have it change the way they think about life.

I’ve been to speeches that I’ve remembered and been affected by; they just haven’t been graduation speeches. Maybe graduation is a bad time. Kids have their minds on other things (like partying?). Either way, since I’ve either been attending or been working at schools my whole life, I’m sure I will get to enjoy a lot more pretty speeches. Maybe one will stand out from the rest and really be memorable. Maybe. Could be today.

Usually when it comes to educational issues… or any issue, really, I have strong opinions, but tracking in schools is an issue I have mixed feelings about. I’ve worked in five different high schools, and have seen tracked curriculum and untracked curriculum in action in various subjects, and I have to say it’s hard to find a good working solution.

For those unfamiliar with the term tracking and its attendant problems and benefits, tracked classes are classes covering the same material or curriculum requirement that are tiered into higher and lower levels of rigor. For example, in a 9th grade English class might have Honors English 9, English 9, and Remedial English 9. Of course, the course title rarely uses the word remedial in it, but it’s understood by both students and teachers alike to be remedial. One school I taught at had a little “grade inflation” for the titles. So remedial English was English, regular English was Honors English, and Honors English was Advanced English—presumably a self-esteem boost for all parties involved.

If you don’t have tracking, the classes you teach have too much of a diversity of motivation, ability, and knowledge for you to tailor the curriculum properly to suit most of your students’ learning needs, so you end up either teaching to your best students and leaving the struggling ones in the dust or teaching to your slowest students and leaving your best students bored. In most cases I’ve seen, teachers tend to teach to the middle-of-the-road students and offer extra help (outside of class) to the struggling students, but still leaving the brightest kids more or less bored.

If, however, you do institute tracking, the remedial classes tend to know they’re the lowest level and that doesn’t do much for their motivation. Their peers tend not to push them much, and so they don’t end up having to do much to get to the middle of the bell curve. Behavioral issues also tend to get compounded in these classes. And, worse yet, it’s often the most experienced teacher who ends up teaching the AP classes, leaving a teacher straight out of college or grad school with the remedial classes, which tend to be larger and full of a mix of learning issues, constantly distracted students, and low motivation.

I do have a rather radical solution (which, as I said before, I don’t feel too strongly about) to this problem, but it’s so radical that I doubt any school would ever adopt it. Get rid of the grade-level system and social promotion. This would have to be delicately implemented, as there would be cultural barriers to overcome in addition to policy ones. In other words, instead of having just English 9, 10, 11, and 12 or English 9R, 9, 9H, 10R, 10, 10H, etc.; have English 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and have a whole bunch of levels in various other subjects as well and get rid of this whole grade level business. You’re not a 9th grader or an 11th grader. You’re a student. One student might be taking English 3, Math 2, Spanish 5, History 6, Science 1, and Art 9. Another might be taking English 1, Math 5, Spanish 4, History 2, Science 2, and Art 1. That way, if you’re having trouble with one particular subject, you don’t automatically advance an entire grade or get held back an entire grade—you don’t advance to the next level of that one particular subject.

This is more in line with how students really are. Yes, there are many all-around spectacular kids, who excel in every subject. Yes, there are some all-around not-so-great kids, who do poorly in every subject. But I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle. I considered myself smart in high school, but I struggled in science and history big time, while simultaneously excelling in English, math, and art; and doing only so-so in foreign language study. If I had attended my own make-believe high school, I might have started off in Science 1, History 2, Spanish 3, English 5, Math 6, and Art 8. Kids in this make-believe school would get very used to the idea of having in any given class a mix of first-year, second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students, and there would be less of a stigma attached to being in Science 1, as even smart-in-other-subject kids would be in that class.

Of course, where this gets tricky is in college counseling, as it might be difficult for a guidance counselor to explain how this kind of curriculum prepares a student for college. We would know, of course, in real life that a student in my make-believe school is just as, if not more, prepared for college as someone at a regular high school, but on paper, it’d be ridiculous for someone who never got past English 2 to advance to university-level studies, even though plenty of high school seniors complete 12th grade English and cannot coherently express their thoughts in writing.

Well, that’s my mental barf of an educational theory. If I ever start my own school, I’ll keep this in mind.

I used to be an English teacher. Back in those days, I would get nervous for the first day of classes; but on a day-to-day basis, I didn’t think too much about speaking in front of a group of people. If you have to do it that often, you don’t have time or emotional energy to spare on getting nervous—you just do it.

I’m out of practice, though. The past four years, I haven’t been teaching. I’ve been working in administrative support in schools. So, yesterday, when I had to speak in front of the whole school during morning meeting, I had jitters, serious jitters. I could feel my heart pumping. I could feel my throat getting dry. I got a headache the night before. Theoretically, I knew I could do it, but I also knew I was four years out of practice, so I was worried I’d choke.

Of course, I didn’t do my nervous self any favors. First of all, I am not one of those people who can memorize a speech or just read off a piece of paper. I don’t like creating PowerPoint presentations in which the text is there on the screen and all I do is read it verbatim to the audience. Frankly, I don’t even like notecards. I did do a mock write-up, but I strayed from that significantly during my talk. That was a brainstorm more than anything. I like being extemporaneous… I guess that’s the problem I’ve created for myself.

In the end, though, I managed to pull it off. I’m no Obama, but I didn’t freeze up or lose words. I somehow got through all my points and said Um maybe only five or six times (instead of fifty times). I’m glad I got a chance to speak to the school. Thank God that’s over with, though!

There are two instances in which I have had this jumbled-word paragraph brought to my attention:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

(The original source is here, but the server appears to be down right now.)

The first time was when I was still an English teacher. One of my students, after having gone through a rather rigorous unit on grammar thought it was amusing. When I shared it with my co-planning teacher, he said he’d rather have shards of glass stuck in his eyes than read papers written that way.

The second time was on the Ubuntu Forums, and a forum member thought a few of us (who occasionally correct others’ grammar or spelling when we just can’t take it any more) were being pedantic, so she or he saw fit to show us that spelling doesn’t really matter.

Here’s the thing, though: as my former colleague pointed out with his exaggeration about shards of glass, just because you can read something doesn’t mean you want to read it the way it’s presented.

After all, I can watch fuzzy black-and-white television on a four-inch screen while I constantly push the antennae around in futile attempts to get better reception, and still hear all the dialogue and understand what’s going on in the movie or television show I’m viewing. I can also listen to third-generation mix tapes that have had two decades of deterioration and still “hear” the music I’m listening to.

Nevertheless, I somehow still like clear pictures in HD on large screens that have digital surround sound and also still prefer to listen to CD-quality recordings of music. The same goes for language and communication. Grammar and spelling conventions and rules don’t exist just to make your life miserable—they actually are around because consensus gives meaning to words, phrases, syntax, and punctuation. If you follow the established guidelines, you don’t leave it up to your reader to make meaning of what you’ve said; you convey the meaning to your reader. Good writing is like an HD-quality movie or a CD-quality song.

That doesn’t mean we have to fly off the deep end and nitpick grammar points that don’t matter (split infinitives or misuse of the terms compose and comprise, for example), but it does mean we should strive to be understood most efficiently, with the fewest words, and with the least amount of work on the part of the reader.

I recently have had the opportunity to help assistant-coach my school’s track team, and it has been a wonderful experience. A wave of nolstagia has swept over me as I’m constantly reminded of the pain and fun of my own training in high school. All the workouts these students are grumbling about as they sweat through them bring back fond memories of my own grumblings. I just wish they knew what a rare opportunity they have—a chance to have physical training built into their pre-5:00 PM day. I think the lack of such a program is the reason why most adults (even ones who were serious athletes in high school or college) are out of shape (or don’t work out “enough”). All the working adults I know work at least nine-hour days, if not longer. That means if they want to exercise regularly, they have to wake up extra early to work out before their commutes or work out late after work and then have an even later dinner, both options being less than ideal if your workout is an outside workout (as it’ll be dark when it’s not during the work day).

So even though I’m not able to do all the workouts with these kids (I have to supervise them or time their splits), it’s great that I can use part of my work day to get some exercise. I just have to keep reminding myself not to tell these kids too many “When I was your age, do you know what we had to do for our track workouts?” stories.