How to Survive Mrs. Reed's English Class

A few things that I think I may just have to explain to kids and parents next semester before we begin. I think they’re pretty universal to most teachers, so feel free to pass these helpful hints along.

#1 Mrs. Reed means EVERYTHING SHE SAYS. If she says that credit will not be awarded to papers that have no cited evidence within the text and/or no works cited page, then papers that are missing either of these will be awarded no credit. Do not give her a crestfallen look and expect partial credit when you turn the sucker in incomplete.

#2 If Mrs. Reed tells you to “write this down,” WRITE IT DOWN.

#3 Mrs. Reed does not give out handy-dandy fill-in-the-blank lecture notes. Now those of you who haven’t been in school in a long time may think this is silly, but it’s a big trend, and I have parents and students who seem to think that I should hand out my class discussion notes with just a few blanks for the kids to fill in, rather than expecting the kids to figure out what’s important. This may be why they don’t understand the significance of the verbal instruction, “Write this down” (see #2).

#4 Mrs. Reed does not give out rubrics. Again, for those unfamiliar, a rubric is table that explains exactly what is required in a paper in order for it to receive an A, B, C or D. This way, if a child is perfectly happy with a C, he doesn’t waste his valuable video game time doing any of the work required for an A.

#5 Parents, do not undermine the skills I am trying to teach. This week, I had a parent explain to me that her son has a difficult time organizing information. For this reason, she had him skip writing the outline for his essay. Say what?

All in all, the gist of the complaints I’m getting right about now is that I make the kids responsible for too much. I don’t write everything out. I have this nasty tendency to say things in my class and expect the kids to listen. What’s with this teacher who keeps saying things all class period long? I ask the kids for their best effort, but I fail to tell them ahead of time specifically what their best effort looks like. I just expect them to understand what the term “best effort” means. What’s up with that? (For the record, I do give them the requirements for every assignment, but apparently this isn’t sufficient. They have to know exactly how much they can skip if they want to without too badly damaging their grade.)

Well, I’m tired of having twits in my government because people can’t read the paper or listen to the news and figure out what information is important, and I can’t give fill-in-the-blank lecture notes to every registered voter in the US. (Plus, if I write them, they might be slightly biased.) The ability to listen to, read, and process information without cheat-sheets is a life skill. And on the life skill note, how many of you get rubrics at your place of employment? You know, the boss says, “Do this much of what I expect and I’ll pay you this much, but, you know, if you only want to do this much, then I’ll pay 80%, or if that’s too much, you can just do this and I’ll pay you 70%.”

(Imagine Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller) “Anyone…anyone…?”

To be fair, I’ve had some decent essays turned in this week and the kiddos’ proofreading has improved dramatically. I also saw some pretty good book report speeches today, and I’m pleased to announce that the vast majority of my students claim to have enjoyed their independent reading novel. All is not lost.