Watching the PopArt video in class with Benjamin Zander was inspiring, in that it offered an alternative to that stressful classroom structure that usually exists because of competition and 'the grade', which only allow for students to concentrate on their performance and not directly on actual skill-building. I wanted to use his ideas as best I could with my 30-1 students, especially with that most stressful of things: the critical/analytical essay. So here's what I did:
- I downloaded the video and showed it to the class. I told them it was to benefit the essay we were about to write, and that while that might not make immediate sense, it soon would.
- I stopped the video at a few key points. The first was to ask them what grade they all could expect on their next essay. It was fun to watch most of them immediately open to a page in their binders and begin a letter: Dear Mrs. Olsen... I hadn't even brought up how that would be part of the process.
- Another pause in the video was after he talked about how he could now be completely open and truthful with his students. I explained that this was what I was going to do. They would write an essay, and I would dissect it word by word, thought by thought, but that they (hopefully) wouldn't find that threatening because they already had the A.
- After he demonstrated with the young cellist, I gave them a run-down of all the resources they had and would have from me, including exemplars, a topic that fit our recent text studies but wasn't overly complicated, and past handouts on structure and dos/don'ts.
- They wrote their letters, and we discussed the topic and some texts together.
- They were given appropriate class time to write an essay, as if they were in the diploma setting.
- They handed them in, and we moved on to our study of King Lear, during which I divided them into groups of five for group study activities.
- Every other day, I would have one groups essays ready for revision. I made audio recordings of myself reading their essay aloud because I always suggest that as a strategy for finding awkward spots. Then I went from beginning to end, critiquing and offering suggestions in all five of the categories for scoring. I was brutal (without being personal, of course), but I constantly reminded them as they downloaded their recordings that they shouldn't let that get them down because they already had an A and because they were now trained to exclaim, "How fascinating!" instead.
- While most of the class worked on Lear, each group would get its own two days of listening to recordings and working on the essay with me giving them 1:5 attention at every step.
- Once all the revised essays were handed back in (with drafts and letters attached), I graded them all, still giving feedback as I normally would. In a class of 28 students, all but three scored - legitimately - proficient (an A) or higher. Those three I spoke to individually, and they all elected to write one more draft to make it a real A. They all now know what their work looks like when it's at that standard.
- This coming week, they will be writing their next critical/analytical essay (without the promise of an A), and I'm excited to see if all that work has paid off for them.
