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December 15, 2024 - December 21, 2024

The Fault in Our New Semester

    The roll out of new semester instruction looks rushed and shallow. When we only share the surface of a meaningful text and overlook the author's importance to our history and landscape of letters, we do our students an injustice.

    When we privilege test-prep style analytical writing over expressivism, we fail our students. To learn to write well, students must practice traditional essay forms on subjects that are cared for, that spark enthusiasm and-self discovery. Analyzing, and then trying to crank out a five-paragraph essay about nothing, is the fastest way to teach a student to hate writing.

    This type of instruction builds anger and frustration over an art form (the essay) that generally lends itself to joy and learning. Writing to learn develops the mind, bringing clarity to new concepts and highlighting patterns and plausible outcomes. Reading a boring text (all texts are boring if you are only dipping into the surface), and then trying to write about the text without adequate information, is a complete waste of time.

    No wonder so many of our marginalized students in public school reject literacy as a tortuous, outdated, concept without relevance. No wonder our students resort to plagiarism and artificial intelligence to complete assignments.

    I am perplexed by school hierarchies. People with obvious qualifications and experience are set aside in favor of people with really nothing. These people with really nothing simply recycle mistakes. If they are in charge of an entire subject at their school, why do they not take extreme measures, like investing in a real education in that subject, so their teachers and students can benefit from knowing them? Teaching a subject in a high school must mean that the teacher loves the material and knows it well. I rarely meet anyone working in my literary and cultural field that truly knows what they are doing or how important it is.

    Some of the incompetence that I have witnessed over these years of public education horrify me. I love books and letters, and to see people trash our treasures in this way confuses and depresses me. My students deserve a better education, an education that will support them in the pursuit of their personal goals and dreams; and selfish adults only care about their paycheck, job security, and that tiny bit of power. Why do they not make a personal investment to find out what they don't know? It's as if the subject of English urges anyone with a dose of Dunning-Kruger to apply.

    And finally, I am far from teacher of the year, but I am also a subject area expert. My philosophies of composition and education collide with the mismanagement and incompetence that I regularly resist and write about. If my magic wand could make changes, it would start at the top. Treating teachers and students like scores is at the root of this problem because this is why we have a shortage of real professionals.

    Highly qualified experts go elsewhere for employment. If I didn't care so much about my students and my subject, the mismanagement and disrespect of both, I would too. I consistently dedicate myself to bringing awareness to this problem and advocating for change. Change means asking that instructors and curriculum writers at the high school level achieve a subject area masters.

Books