For Thursday, August 20, 1998 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 704 words

Bare bear

I'm going to bare myself, right here in front of God (if he's a subscriber) and everyone. I have before me a pile of sealed envelopes. Inside the envelopes are letters written by my freshman lit. students as part of their final June exam. I asked them to critique my class, pros and cons, and be brutally honest. I asked them to tell me their most and least favorite books and activities.

What should go? What should stay?

To encourage honesty, I gave students the option of signing their names or remaining anonymous. The letters were typed so handwriting wouldn't be a factor. I also promised not to open them until August, well after their final grades were turned in.

I do this each year. It's my barometer. I read the letters while planning my syllabus for the coming year, and modify my lessons based on what the letters say.

I do suppose, and hope, that a lot of nice things have been written about me and my program. However, it would be egocentric and extremely boring to share the compliments with you. So, instead, I will share the complaints. I'll let you know what students didn't like about my class.

I will do this in no particular order. As I read each letter, I will write down the criticisms. I will not append them with rationale or context. We'll just leave them hanging. For parents whose kids are scheduled to have me this year, it's not too late to yank them.

"I hated all the books we read except 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'"

"The one thing you should cut is Dante's 'Inferno.' That was a waste of time. I believe very few students enjoyed it. Also, it is over the heads of most 14-year-olds."

"Learning all the poetry terminology did not help me at all. It took away the fun of learning about poems."

"I don't like how you grade. It's too hard to understand. I think you should give us points."

"I wished the class had been more balanced. There were times when we'd have nothing to do, and times when we'd have a tremendous amount to do. It would be better to space out our work more evenly."

"Some of the movies we watched were quite useless. The cockroach movie was fun, but it had nothing to do with our class."

"Writing questions every night while reading Dante got quite boring."

"I came out of middle school with A's in English each year. Then the first essay in your class I got my first real F. That threw me for a loop."

"I didn't understand the point of the cockroach movie."

"I absolutely hated doing vocabulary sentences. Perhaps if we did fewer of them over a longer period of time it might be better."

"I didn't enjoy any of the books we read except 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'"

"More structured in-class activities instead of always discussing things."

"Give more of a long-term outline so we know what we're doing."

"We didn't get enough vocabulary homework. It made it harder to learn the 210 words."

"I bombed a lot of essays. I wished we could have spent more time going over rough drafts, making revisions."

"Give more than one period to do an in-class essay."

"Explain your essays and projects more vividly. Sometimes it was hard to know if we were doing things right."

"When you gave blanket A's on the spring project, it made me feel a tad superficial because I'd worked hard to earn mine."

"We only had to read 1,000 pages of independent reading for the year. That's not enough. It should be like 3,000. That would be challenging."

"I expected to do more homework. You should assign more homework."

"My only concern is that you take literary symbolism too far. You seem to find every detail deep and meaningful. There's nothing wrong with symbolism. It's just that some things may not be symbolic."

"We want to do more creative writing."

And there I have it. That's my load to bear. Now begins the task of augmenting my program into something new and improved. Thanks to these letters, and the hundreds that have come before, I have a head-start.