maybe in that wanting there is some hope

The school year has come to an end. The students are currently taking an online exam that is supposed to tell me if their reading level has improved. Most of them went down since January. Is it possible that I actually made them worse at reading? The June tests, from my experience, are always lower than those in the beginning or middle of the school year. If I hate sitting in this quiet room, I'm sure they do, too. It makes me wonder about the Regents exams. Are there generally higher scores on the January exams than the June ones? Do these tests show us anything real or actual anyway?

The evaluation we had them fill out on the last day of classs probably told me more about what they learned this year. When we asked them what they learned they said: "class can be fun and you can still learn" , "college is hard", "you have to do your homework to get a good grade", "essays!!!" Maybe we taught more writing than reading, maybe that's why these online tests are showing lower scores. Maybe they're just tired.

A student plagerized the last paper of the year. When he wrote the word "superficiality" it was a pretty big red flag. After googling it, I found several sentences of his paper from sparksnotes online. I felt really angry and somehow hurt by this. I was suprised by hwo much I cared about this plagerism. First I felt angry that this child made such little effort to hide his cheating, I feel like it was almost an insult about how stupid he thought I was. And then, I was angry that I had worked with him so much this year and encouraged him so much and now I didn't think he was ready for the 10th grade. And after that, I felt terribly sad for him. To him, the idea of actually writing a paper was as abstract as writing some publishible work that uses the word "superficiality" -- they were both so far removed from what he felt capable of that they were the same. He couldn't do it and he cheated and lied to cover it up, he wasn't good at cheating and lying because he wasn't even sure what it was supposed to look like. That made me feel like a terrible teacher, one that never met this kid where he was at and was never able to give him what he needed to succeed. I had what I thought was a great year, where I was happy and, I thought, successful and then suddenly I wasn't so sure about myself. And after all of that, I felt proud of him. This is a little strange, but he is the sort of student who never tried before, never want to get a good grade, never wanted to please his teacher and in the past he would have just scoffed at the assignment and not have handed it in. So, I was a little proud of him for making that step toward being a student -- yeah, he did it all wrong, yeah he will get a zero, but maybe in that wanting there is some hope.

Since the last time I posted, I bought an apartment and got married. new name, same game.