"Dear X2-er ..."

I usually don't make too many comments on the letters written to the Washington Post. That's usually because they're actually: a) intelligent; b) relevant to what was in the paper; c) not written by lunatics just released from Arkham. However, the letters in response to Sunday's story about a high school valedictorian who has had major problems finding a job in this economy, a story that I wrote about the other day. But the letters that the Post published were pretty constructive:

It is interesting that high-achiever Melissa Meyer appears to have considered only one public-sector option -- teaching -- where she lacks credentials and interest. She could explore other public options, several that could lead her back to Washington and to power positions in the future.

Highly educated and athletic, she could consider becoming an officer in one of the five military services, as well as the FBI, Customs, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service and the State Department's Foreign Service. Additional career
opportunities are available in a number of state and city public safety agencies, including law enforcement and fire and rescue. Almost all of these sectors are actively recruiting women ...

The comments on the article itself are a mixed bag, which is what I pretty much predicted: several people are nasty in the "You didn't work hard"/"You're entitled and whiny"/"Aww ... cry me a river" vein (don't you love the anonymity provided by the Internet); at least one person blamed "Obama socialism" (seriously?); and others were more like the letter writer above. The perspective of others is always interesting to read with pieces like this, especially since the article focuses on the type of person who normally doesn't get much sympathy from your average reader -- someone who is smart, white, and middle/upper-middle class. So I kind of see where the "You're entitled and whiny" comments may come from.

Now, I only read the first 20 or so comments out of however many there were (probably a couple of hundred--the article's a week old) but I wonder how many people out there really considered her point of view when they posted. In other words, I wonder how many people read that and asked themselves if she kind of wants to be checked out for a little while because she's burned out from the life she's led so far?

Think about it: raised in a family with a strong work ethic, has successful siblings, was valedictorian of her high school class, worked her ass off at a competitive university where she was fully engaged and entrenched. If I spent an enormous amount of time looking for a job and was forced to move back home because my lease ran out and I had no way of paying it, I'd get frustrated, too. Not that it's a huge excuse, but again, I think we're seeing, in this recession, a resurgence of the disappointment that comes with an entire generation discovering that it is way much harder out there than they were told it would be.

This generation, in fact, probably has it worse off than the one that graduated 20 years ago and headed into the recession of the early 1990s. Because Gen-Xers weren't held up like Simba in The Lion King at birth while Elton John played for them and then had their butts wiped by everyone who came along (mostly to sell them something, which they readily bought). So Millenials (God, I hate that term) have an even bigger letdown and maybe even a longer recovery in store for them.

At least, though, there seems to be some sort of understanding out there, people who have been through it and are going through it and can see that a story like this isn't just some fluff profile piece for the sake of a fluff piece; that it's as real as the stories the Post has been running about people losing their homes because they got led down a dark path by predatory lenders.

It's good journalism and a good conversation to have.

Stuff That Works: Special Thanksgiving Edition!

My son and I were watching Good Morning America and their consumer reporter, who looked like she was being Skyped in to report on Black Friday deals (because that makes it look so much more important) was talking about how Target was offering toasters for $3 and was yelling "Three dollar toaster! Three dollar toaster!"

Ah, the unabashed consumerism that follows the gluttony of Thanksgiving.

Anyway, on this Thanksgiving I want to share something that always worked great for me in journalism. Every year, I introduced my students to the concept of a news cycle, and Thanksgiving weekend was the example that I used. It worked for two reasons: the kids were pretty familiar with it, and it never changes.

We'd start with Wednesday, where we could all talk about traveling somewhere to a dinner (in some cases, as students would relate, hours upon hours on the interstate) and the stories about the traffic and weather. Thursday is, of course, about eating and football and turkey pardons and the nice things people are doing for the homeless. Friday is ... well, we all know it as "Black Friday," the day that singlehandedly saves the United States economy from complete ruin every single year, and the day which many of my students can relate to because they have parked it in front of a Walmart at 3:00 a.m. (you get some good discussion out of this, btw). Then there's Saturday and Sunday, which is the postgame on Black Friday and the hellish traffic home.

Like I said, it never changes unless something completely catastrophic happens (a few years ago, a tanker truck exploded on I-95 in Maryland and closed the highway for the better part of eight hours ... the day before Thanksgiving. Yikes!), and it's a naturally ending news cycle instead of one that's interrupted by another event (for that example, I use Chandra Levy's disappearance in the summer of 2001).

So if you ever have to teach a news cycle, use this and I'm sure you'll get at least a few students paying attention as well as a few laughs. Happy Thanksgiving!

Wrong way down a one-way street

"This computer won't print."

"I talked to tech support. They're going to work on this in the next couple of weeks. Just make sure you save your work."

"Where do I save it?"

"Did you bring your flash drive with you?"

"No, I forgot to get one."

"Oookay ... is there any way you can email it to yourself?"

"I don't really email. I Facebook and stuff."

Sometimes the conversations I have in computer labs really are too good to be true, but that was one I had yesterday as we were wrapping up the latest session on our research project (don't get me started on how much I hate this project and those things that were wrong from the beginning, many of which were out of my control). Then, last night, I stumbled upon this post ("What Does 'Getting It' Mean Anyway?") about how social media is so important to education as is the rest of "Web 2.0" (have we completely abandoned that idiotic term yet?) for a variety of reasons.

I'm going to skip the part of this conversation that deals with firewalls and administrators who think that the Internet is the tool of the devil, because we've heard that so many times as a counter-argument to what's usually some sort of projection of an educational utopia (or dare I say ... "edutopia" considering George Lucas was the speaker referenced in this post). And I am going to "qualify" this whole post by saying that I am actually a technophile even if I will probably come off as a Luddite or someone who is afraid of technology or "part of the problem" or whatever.

But I am skeptical. Not just because I can tell you that George Lucas really knows his technology but in being at the forefront of said technology somehow destroyed his ability to get his actors to ... well, act. No, because I've seen posts like this many times and it's all the same thing: "what can we do to meet our students where they are?" And that's all well and good, but when do we start asking the question on the other side: "what can we do to make our students meet where we are?"

There are plenty of teachers out there who use various software and internet applications on a daily basis, ones which have way more use in the business world than, say, Facebook or Twitter (well, unless you work for TMZ). I continue to be amazed at the fact that many of my students don't know basic keyboarding, as well as basic functions in MS Word (such as indenting paragraphs and double spacing); however, when I read about their generation, it's always about how "plugged in" they are.

The email conversation I had with my student is another example. Why doesn't she have an email address and why should I or someone else expect to change the way I communicate just because she only seems to be using one corporate-owned platform? And if I do work myself around her and other students, how much fundamental learning winds up getting sacrificed for the shiny new toy? I've said it before about programs like Inspiration and other things sold to school districts in bulk: that's nice, but why can't my students string enough words together to form a sentence?

I know this is going to sound like one of my 2-year-old's temper tantrums, but what about us? We talk a lot about how WE have to adapt to THEIR learning styles, abilities, use of technology, etc. Why aren't we talking about how we have to teach them to adapt to OUR teaching style, class requirements, use of technology, etc.? When they get to the point in their lives where they will have to become functioning members of society (holding down jobs, owning property, paying bills, etc.) they are going to have to adapt. This could be to their boss at work, their financial situation, or to the standards set by the armed forces.

Setting clear expectations and following through on them is a goal for every teacher every year, but the conversation about it seems to be way too one-sided in favor of the student. I'm not saying that we have to go back to forcing square pegs into round holes, but you can't expect me to bend and twist against an immovable object, because at the end of the day that immovable object will fail.

X2?

She graduated magna cum laude from the GW Business School in May, applied for 30 jobs at some of the nation's best-known companies, and it went nowhere. After visiting the campus career center and redesigning her résumé, she applied for 10
more jobs. Still nothing. The lease on her Foggy Bottom apartment expired in June. There was no place to go but home, with a collection of rejection letters and a haunting sense of betrayal. For 23 years, she had advanced down America's path to success -- perfect grades, a $200,000 college degree, a folder overstuffed with business cards -- only to have it dead-end back where she started.

"What was the point?" she asks.

I read this article ("In recession, one road led back home" WaPo, 11/22/09) and was rivited, and for once not in the usual way. My knee-jerk reaction to a story like this would have been pretty cynical: "Aww, you poor little millennial. You didn't get what you were promised. Welcome to the real world, BWAH-HA-HA!!!" But with unemployment at 10% and the economy nowhere near full recovery, I acutally feel some sympathy for Melissa Meyer, the girl featured in this story, and many like her.

Think about it: you're groomed thoroughly for a successful life, attend an expensive college in a great city far away from home, you take as much advantage of opportunities as possible (if you read the article, it's not like she sat on her ass and drank for four years at GW), and you hit the real world and ... ? I mean, what are your options when you can't find a single job in a really, really terrible job market ... aside from graduate school, which you may or may not get into and may or may not be able to afford?

And this is a girl who comes from a pretty stable background. I can't imagine what it's like for twentysomethings who are graduating college after pulling themselves up from a hellish upbringing.

The Post and other publications have run a few stories in the last year or so about recent college graduates and the problems they've faced. I've been following them with interest because it seems like we're at the start of another generational cycle, and from the looks of it, this generation could have the makings of another Generation X.

Sort of, anyway. The Generation X that I'm a part of is on the Generation Y cusp--I was born in 1977, so when Time and Newsweek were running these stories back in the early 1990s and Douglas Coupland was writing said novel, I was in high school and wouldn't graduate college until 1999, in the middle of the dot-com boom--so I can't make the best assessment of this. But if you listen to Meyer's parents and siblings in the article, they seem to looking at her situation with the same disdain that the Baby Boomers had for the "slackers" in 1991:

All she knows for certain is that she wants to save $4,000 for airfare and depart in early 2010, for somewhere. "I don't want to look back after 30 years in a cubicle and think, 'I should have.' "

It is an outlook some in her family struggle to comprehend. When Melissa mentions the yoga ashram, her sister responds with an e-mail demanding a more practical plan, "by the end of business hours today." Her brother visits from Australia and, during a fight over access to the shower, calls Melissa worthless for living at home. Shelly comes upstairs to referee. "You two figure this out," she says, "because I really don't want either of you here." It is an untruth spoken during a moment of irritation, but Melissa bursts into tears and rolls the words around in her head for days. Has she become a burden to her parents? It is the one thought that makes her want to find a cubicle, fast.

It's not exactly the way it was 20 years ago--there are more of this particular generation than there were Xers, and it seems that they're way more willing to suck at marketing's teat than Xers were (at least at the time). But I think of the zeitgeist and whatever pop culture term you can throw out there and I wonder what will become of this group of kids and their high school counterparts (some of which are cousins of mine) as the recession deepens or lets up and they are forced to deal with the very harsh reality of our current world.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep assigning papers to my seniors so they can deal with the very harsh reality of college. And I may reread Generation X so I may follow up on this entry.

The Research Project Question ... AGAIN.

"Can I just give you the PowerPoint and not do the presentation?"

"No. You have to present."

"What happens if I don't present to the class?"

"You get a zero."

"Why?"

"Because you have to present. That's why it's a presentation. It's part of the assignment."

I actually had this conversation today in English class. We're in the middle of a large-scale research project and today was the first day in the computer lab. This is right around the time that I've found students sink or swim on doing research projects; they've "done research" in the library and now have to spend several days in the lab to type everything up. In this case, we're working on both essays and presentations and have six days to work.

In theory, this should be pretty easy. The average essay in my class takes two days to write and all this "research" that they were doing is proof and examples that thye need, which is just like any other research project ever done. So what is it about this particular project that is so ridiculously annoying? And why am I having conversations with students who obviously want to get out of doing their work?

There's a couple of things I've seen happening that continue to clue me in as to why research projects are always such a clusterfuck ...

1. Despite their "plugged-in-ness" and being "digital natives," my students are morons when it comes to computers. Do you know how many times I had to show someone how to double-space a paragraph in Microsoft Word?

2. Putting a student in front of a computer is like leaving my two-year-old alone with a box of cookies. Sooner or later, they're bouncing off the walls. I've spent more time chasing people off of online games than helping them with their papers.

3. Half their time in the lab is spent making up for the fact that they dicked around when they were supposed to be doing research in the library. The other half of that time is spent trying to somehow negotiate extensions, or trying to get me to do things like give a partial grade because they didn't do what they were supposed to.

I honestly wonder sometimes why I even try to come up with a project, a schedule, and requirements. You know, except for my own entertainment. I'm getting sick of dealing with this attitude that somehow all of them will get away with wasting my time and not feel any consequences.

I get the feeling that this is what they've been able to pull before. That sooner or later every teacher they've had caves and makes sure that their lack of effort and absolute refusal to do anything but roll around and turn one another's computers off (because that's somehow funny) doesn't cause them to fail and doesn't screw up their chances.

So the question remains as I spend the next five class days trying to make sure they're on task and creating something worthwhile -- should I stick to my guns, even if they fail?

Because it's who you are.

The Metro section of today's Washington Post features the article "Boldly Modest Declaration of Faith," which profiles Smar Abuagla, an eighth-grader who is Muslim and as of this year has decided to wear a head scarf to school. The piece itself is more human interest than politically charged, and the writer, Tara Bahrampour, does her best to provide a simple look at what it's like to wear the symbol of a religion that's in the minority in one of the worst possible places for anyone who is "different": a middle school.

There's nothing incredibly surprising or shocking in the piece, as Abuagla is supported by her friends on most days, and what seems like only occassional harrassment from boys, such as when she has an eraser thrown at her head:

But later that day a boy in gym class asks if she is hiding a bomb under her scarf. Another calls her "raghead." Someone throws a pencil at her head; she can't tell who, so she just snaps it in half.

The teasing, which only takes up a few paragraphs of the story, would actually seem like typical teasing from immature middle school boys if hate speech weren't thrown in. But with the taunting and name-calling, it's a reflection of the ignorant culture from which the boys who harrass her come. Because if she was walking around with a crucifix dangling from her neck, I'm sure that they would barely have bothered.

There is a particular amount of bravery on her part in her expressing her faith; she should be given credit for having that sort of devotion, especially when she's simply showing off who she is and not trying to force anyone to conform to that (which is where I take issue with the expression of religious symbols ... I have no problem with the devoutly Christian students at school wearing their church camp T-shirts; it's when they start preaching and trying to convert others that I have a problem).

At an age where very few people really know or are just beginning to know who they are, she's taking a bold step toward either finding out who she is or showing that she knows it. In the wake of events like the Ft. Hood shootings, when I've had to read online discussions where the participants paint Islam like some sort of culture of death and violence or worldwide terrorist threat (like it's Cobra or something), I think we need more stories like this and more students like Smar Abuagla.

Where Accountability and Paranoia Collide

I think that my philosophy on doing your work is about to come in conflict with the idea that students should always have a chance. You see, I'm one of those teachers who believes in the concept of the zero (0). If a student doesn't hand in an assignment, I can't exactly give it a grade, so it goes in my book as a zero.

This is clearly spelled out in my late policy. Small assignments (your average low-points homework or classwork assignment) become a zero on the second day late (after 50% off the first day). With larger assignments (an essay or paper or project, I take 15% off the grade per day for three days and on the fourth day will not accept the assignment. Now, this gives any student who did not hand in his assignment nearly a week's worth of classes to get it to me (naturally, I accommodate for absences).

I honestly feel that this is fair, and I'm not the only teacher I know who uses a policy like this. But what's been happening in my classes is that after the first marking period, I have students who are failing. Badly. Like with grades well below 50, meaning that if they don't pull at least a C for the rest of the year they'll likely fail the course.

It's not impossible to pull a C. I've found that the student who simply shows up and does work with a minimum of effort usually pulls at least a C-. And I've had students fail my courses because they just really struggle and are in way over their heads. But even they fail by five points. Failing by 20? 30? It means you're not doing anything.

Now, since I have this policy, one which students know about because I handed it out the first day, have it posted in my room, and it's on my website (plus, my department chair has a copy), I should be fine as far as being able to justify such a bad F, right? There's the rub, though. I'm getting worried that somewhere along the line, I'm going to get called into the principal's office to explain this and the fact that I actually enforce my homework policy is not going to be enough. That my insistence that students be made to meet a deadline will be "too harsh."

I'm not going to change the policy, but I feel that now I have to start babying the students who are failing badly. Not by giving them extra chances, but calling home on a regular basis to make sure the parents know what's going on, because if I have enough documented calls and they still fail, it's not my fault or something.

Which is so disappointing because I feel like I'm lowering my standards. I have to worry so much about my own accountability that I'm worrying that I have to start compromising my principles that revolve around making my students accountable ... because other teachers were more lenient and let them make up a 4-week-old paper or retake a failed test or coddled them?

I really shouldn't have to.