Back in the early 1980’s I was teaching Biology in a small, rural village in SW Michigan. For the most part my students would fall into one of three categories. There were overachievers who expected A’s on everything. From me, all they wanted were the questions so they could memorize the right answers. Then there were youngsters who figured, good enough is good enough. They hoped for A’s & B’s but could take a C home without getting grounded. Bringing up the tail end were marginal survivors who, for one reason or another, struggled to stay afloat. They just didn’t want to fail. The A-at-all-cost group preferred true/false, multiple choice, fill in the blank questions. I included them but also a few story problems. They do it in math, why not biology. It vexed the overachievers but everyone else seemed to like it fine, it opened up all kinds of possibility; if you don’t have the right word, explain something you do know. Occasionally, over that 13 year gig, a curious, open ended mind would blow through like an itinerant sassafras leaf through a maple grove. The marriage of curiosity and The JoyOf Discovery is a marvel to behold.
Studying arthropods (exoskeletons & jointed appendages) the grasshopper was our generic insect, both in the text and the lab. Lubber grasshoppers are huge, big as humming birds, maybe bigger. Dismembering, dissecting and identifying anatomy was easy, even if the formalin-preserved insects fell apart and got messy (formalin is toxic and they don’t use it anymore. Actually, they do virtual dissections now, you need a mouse or touchpad, not tweezers or magnifiers.)
After we finished the unit, I assigned a paper: 2/3 pages, 300 words, hand written. Pretend you are a young adult grasshopper gone off to Arthropod University for your college education. Write a 3 day G-hopper diary. In it, include biologically correct details of grasshopper anatomy, nutrition, growth, reproduction, locomotion and behavior. You can anthropomorphize the story line but the biology has to be grasshopper correct. The stereotype-A students complained, said it was stupid, said it is a science class not writing, etc. But everybody else welcomed it. Several influential, connected parents parroted their kids complaints but my principal backed me up. I contended, life isn’t going to present your kids with multiple choice questions. They will need to respond to prompts with an articulate, rational narrative. It required they create the story, couldn’t copy it from the text or an encyclopedia and that was the rub. They had to use content in a different way than they had acquired it. Cheating would be difficult, copying somebody else’s work would be betting that I wouldn’t read it closely. I knew very well, everything that required written content, I had to read carefully and leave footnotes in the margin as proof. I burned lots of late night hours reading biology essays and they knew it.
Once, I thought I had an answer-sharing, cheating problem. I gave both Bio 1 classes the same multiple choice, 15 question quiz. With time to spare at the end of the hour I suggested, if they agreed not to share answers with the next class, we could exchange papers, check them and know how they did immediately. They all thought that was good, agreed to play fair. We did that, collected papers so I could record scores and they went to lunch. The next class did the same lesson, ended with the quiz but not enough time to exchange papers. What they didn’t know was; I made two different quizzes; same questions but shuffled in different order. No (a, b, c, d) answer for any question would be correct on both versions. The best students in the second group failed miserably and it was my fault. Got some pushback from parents on that too but mostly to learn just what I had done. Kids told them the quizzes were different but not how so. Once parents knew, I was off the hook. Even then, kids knew that in the real world, cheating is tolerated, getting caught is not.
I do not miss teacher stuff and I don’t think I would want to be in the business now. The hard edge between standardized test expectations, prescription instruction and teacher culpability leaves teachers in the lurch and it would be stifling for someone like me. They get paid better now but the job is more like operating a machine, raw materials in, piece-parts out. By the mid 1990’s I was teaching in another time zone. The shift to standardized assessment was in the air but we had also moved on with the assumption that all kids can learn and we had to meet them where they were, academically, emotionally, etc. If the cookie recipe calls for 12 minutes at 375 degrees you still check on them. If they’re not the right shade of brown at 12 minutes, you leave them in until they get there. I don’t miss the teacher stuff but I do miss hanging out with my teenage friends.
Studying arthropods (exoskeletons & jointed appendages) the grasshopper was our generic insect, both in the text and the lab. Lubber grasshoppers are huge, big as humming birds, maybe bigger. Dismembering, dissecting and identifying anatomy was easy, even if the formalin-preserved insects fell apart and got messy (formalin is toxic and they don’t use it anymore. Actually, they do virtual dissections now, you need a mouse or touchpad, not tweezers or magnifiers.)
After we finished the unit, I assigned a paper: 2/3 pages, 300 words, hand written. Pretend you are a young adult grasshopper gone off to Arthropod University for your college education. Write a 3 day G-hopper diary. In it, include biologically correct details of grasshopper anatomy, nutrition, growth, reproduction, locomotion and behavior. You can anthropomorphize the story line but the biology has to be grasshopper correct. The stereotype-A students complained, said it was stupid, said it is a science class not writing, etc. But everybody else welcomed it. Several influential, connected parents parroted their kids complaints but my principal backed me up. I contended, life isn’t going to present your kids with multiple choice questions. They will need to respond to prompts with an articulate, rational narrative. It required they create the story, couldn’t copy it from the text or an encyclopedia and that was the rub. They had to use content in a different way than they had acquired it. Cheating would be difficult, copying somebody else’s work would be betting that I wouldn’t read it closely. I knew very well, everything that required written content, I had to read carefully and leave footnotes in the margin as proof. I burned lots of late night hours reading biology essays and they knew it.
Once, I thought I had an answer-sharing, cheating problem. I gave both Bio 1 classes the same multiple choice, 15 question quiz. With time to spare at the end of the hour I suggested, if they agreed not to share answers with the next class, we could exchange papers, check them and know how they did immediately. They all thought that was good, agreed to play fair. We did that, collected papers so I could record scores and they went to lunch. The next class did the same lesson, ended with the quiz but not enough time to exchange papers. What they didn’t know was; I made two different quizzes; same questions but shuffled in different order. No (a, b, c, d) answer for any question would be correct on both versions. The best students in the second group failed miserably and it was my fault. Got some pushback from parents on that too but mostly to learn just what I had done. Kids told them the quizzes were different but not how so. Once parents knew, I was off the hook. Even then, kids knew that in the real world, cheating is tolerated, getting caught is not.
I do not miss teacher stuff and I don’t think I would want to be in the business now. The hard edge between standardized test expectations, prescription instruction and teacher culpability leaves teachers in the lurch and it would be stifling for someone like me. They get paid better now but the job is more like operating a machine, raw materials in, piece-parts out. By the mid 1990’s I was teaching in another time zone. The shift to standardized assessment was in the air but we had also moved on with the assumption that all kids can learn and we had to meet them where they were, academically, emotionally, etc. If the cookie recipe calls for 12 minutes at 375 degrees you still check on them. If they’re not the right shade of brown at 12 minutes, you leave them in until they get there. I don’t miss the teacher stuff but I do miss hanging out with my teenage friends.
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