The Agony of Defeat...

If you're an American over 40, and an ABC network fan, you will recognise the converse to "the thrill of victory..." how many of you remember that poor skier from ABC's Wide World of Sports??? I certainly do....that poor unfortunate soul lived with the stigma of that bone crushing fall for years as he provided the clip to the narration for the popular sports show.

So - ok...with every victory, one must expect that somewhere along the way, one will experience defeat. To admit to it, learn from it, and move forward from it, is the sign of true character. Everyone embarking on this course of exchange teaching, is experiencing some personal and professional challenges where they feel defeated. I know that my fellow US Fulbrighters are all feeling inadequate in some aspect of our profession during our experience in the UK. Each one of us is finding it difficult to manage the number of courses we teach, the lack of preparation periods that accompany those increased preps, classroom management differences, and the differences in "assessments" and "grading"- all of which are out of the norms of our typical experiences. We are not handling every change perfectly, and we are not suceeding at everything we attempt during daily lessons, and while it is easy to openly talk about the successes, it is not easy to admit the failures and mistakes. It takes courage to write about it, but here goes.

While perhaps these next experiences I'm going to talk about, and admit to, are not exactly "agonising" bone crushing defeats, they certainly have sent me back to my first years as a novice teacher, where uncertainty with teaching new curriculum, classroom management and assessment of student work, were some of my biggest challenges, and for a brief amount of time over the past week or so I have felt like an utter failure in my chosen profession...and indeed the professional passion of my life, which is to teach. It is difficult to come to grips with, but it is the truth.

My first defeatist moment arose when I started to investigate the curriculum for the poetry unit of study with Year 11. Having once been a poetryphobe I pride myself on the fact that in the past few years, thanks mostly to my instruction of Advanced Placement Literature students, I have made great strides in my knowledge of, my love of, and my ability to teach poetry to my students at all levels. When I began investigating the particular methodology and modes of instruction for poetry at the GCSE level, I ran across a few things that made my "American" head spin. The most prominent issue being that a "personal response" to poetry is greatly emphasized in this unit of study; the emotional response evoked in the student by a particular piece of poetry and their personal interpretation about what the content represents and the evidence they provide to justify that response...no matter if the child misreads or misunderstands the purpose and subject of the poem as intended by the poet.

As I researched this particular method of instruction about personal student response, I was reminded of Zachary's well-crafted essay, written for an AP English assignment last year, on the poem, Five O'Clock Shadow. Zachary proceeded to write a fairly comprehensive and persuasive piece revolving around the idea that this poem was about the act of shaving one's face. Unfortunately, while he did provide some evidence from the poem, he failed this assignment, since the AP Poetry response rubric shows no mercy for a complete "misread" of the poem and this poem is about the end of one's life and living in a nursing home. Also, since much of how American students are tested is in the format of multiple choice, students often must know the "correct" answer and the "correct" interpretation of a poem, and be able to have the skills to read critically enough to decipher the "correct" meaning - now I was learning that there is no "correct" response to a poem...and while I realize that some of my American colleagues will agree with that, and to an extent so do I, what I do know is that when I administer practice examination questions regarding a particular poem on any subject or by any poet, there is definitely a "correct" and "incorrect" answer to to those particular questions. SO - here I am having to reprogram my brain on yet, one more thing.

The solution was to request observing my head of department, Jayne, teach a Year 11 poetry lesson and I did that on Wednesday. Talk about a rookie moment...observing a peer teach a lesson on something as simple as poetry. In the end it was 100% worthwhile, as I engaged in the process as an active particpant with a group of students where we were assigned to gage our personal response to a William Blake poem titled, "The Sick Rose." The group was challenged to devise as many interpretations and personal responses to the poem as possible in ten minutes...we then regrouped as a large class where all the ideas were shared ...ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime...never once did we study the poem for its "actual" meaning, context, content, or structure...it was a very different lesson than the poetry lessons I am accustomed to teaching; and worthwhile to observe as now I have a much better understanding of how to structure the remainder of the lessons from here on out, with this all important piece of exam preparation. Zach would be interested to know, that under these parameters, perhaps his essay and his response would have scored an A* (star) grade.


My second defeatist moment involves my complete inability to comprehend and wrap my mind around, the seemingly lack of assessment that takes place in this education system, outside of a coursework essay based on a unit of study and the GCSE exam in Year 11. While students are engaged in a variety of learning tasks, they are not assessed for their work in a formal method, such as we use in the United States. Daily work, homework, classwork, group work, and any kind of work "set" for completion by the teacher is not "graded" in the traditional sense that an American thinks of "grading." Students do not take written quizzes, written tests, or complete compositions as best work for "grading." Students do not receive "grade point averages." I have not yet "graded" anything from a student I currently teach. As a result I feel that I don't have a good knowledge of the individual student, their abilities and basic skills in a formal, quantitative method of assessment. Assessment is very much about classroom observation, "over the shoulder grading" and "marking" exercise books. Exercise books are the place where student work is completed; I have cursorily read and briefly commented on student work in these books.


I have been "marking" coursework from this year's Year 11 students, using the AQA marking scheme. This method, is, to say the least, confusing and while somewhat similar to our rubrics at home, it is also very different, as some pieces of work use two rubrics for different sets of skills - for example, "writing" and "reading" skills, and then these marks must be added to deem a final score. I have had the same set of essays given back to me twice because this was not clear to me. My "American" trained brained is finding it difficult to isolate the content of an essay from the grammar of an essay - but indeed, that is the case when some course work essays are being used to assess a student's reading skills and some coursework essays are being used to assess a student's language skills; therefore "marking"them, which consists of using "tick" marks (check marks) and writing a series of annotated comments using the wording provided in the marking scheme, can be somewhat challenging. For example what exactly is the difference between "student responds ", "student understands", or "student is familiar with" in regards to author's use of language. (Those of you at home will have shades of the controversy and anguish experienced when we developed our school wide rubrics and were searching for the descriptors to use.)

Bear in mind that these marking schemes are used throughout the entire country for every school administering this particular set of exams and instructing this particular coursework. Therefore, teachers go through a "calibration" within their school, to determine that all teachers are assessing essays accurately in accordance with the mark scheme. I am being sent to a conference on this particular idea on November the 26th....(that's actually Thanksgiving...when the rest of you are watching football and gorging on turkey I will be engaging in professional development activities...you can laugh now, its ok.)

Fourth, I have found myself frustrated at the numbers of students who do not complete their homework or their daily work. My response to this lack of completion is to assign a break or a lunch detention. After school detentions are reserved for extremely serious offenses and letters must be sent home to parents before an after school detention can be assigned, along with a precursor of other intervention processes including the involvement of form tutors, heads of year, and head of department, when dealing with particularly difficult students. Refocusing students on task, motivating them to complete their work, and maintaining an acceptable level of "noise" in the classroom is proving to be quite challenging, and takes up more instructional time than I, myself, find acceptable, and it is extremely difficult for me to "stay on task" in my lesson,when I have to interrupt myself to refocus students on their work.

In effect this is a classroom management issue. Yes, I am struggling with managing a classroom here! For a person who rarely writes students up at home, except in severe cases of disrespect, this is a major admission for me. I pride myself on a well-run and orderly classroom, where mutual respect is the mantra and where there is an acceptable level of "noise". I feel that every "weapon" I have ever used in my arsenal of tactics has been stripped from me. I cannot threaten with a "zero" for the day on an assignment; I cannot throw out a "pop quiz"; I cannot assign an after school or office detention; I do not have "in-school suspension" to threaten with; I cannot "sick" a coach on an under performing or wise-ass student and threaten to deprive them from practice or playing time; I do not have a list of parent phone numbers or emails instantly at my fingertips for an impromptu phone call home placed directly from the classroom; I cannot make a phone call to the office and have an administrator appear at my door in five minutes to handle any student issues. Don't get me wrong, my classroom is far from being "out of control", but it is not yet at the standard of an acceptable teaching and learning environment that I am comfortable with, or that reflects my skill as a teacher in this particular area. Keeping students on task has proved extremely frustrating.

I have formulated several theories as to why this particular "on task" issue is a problem I am facing here. I don't have an answer and I'm not quite sure what it is...however, on Thursday, when all Year 10 students were taken off "timetable" and given the entire day to spend in English specifically to work on their coursework essays, my top set of 37 Year 10 students, who pose the biggest challenge to me as far as remaining on task with daily work, were diligently and constructively working for a full five hours. They were the quietest I have ever heard them, fully engaged in their writing and actively accepting and seeking out feedback about their ideas and their writing. The seriousness of the coursework essay and the implications of the necessity for a good grade apparently having some effect on the quality of their work and effort during this particular class.

My final defeatist moment has been building over the course of many days, and cannot be simply explained as one specific moment or event...but suffice it to say that my classroom has seen the demise of my trademark "horseshoe" seating arrangement. For a variety of reasons this particular set up just did not work here. First, I believe that I was expecting too much from these students in introducing this concept when it is not anything they are accustomed to, and along with my funny voice, accent, and different teaching style, it may have proven too much to expect them to handle one more "new" thing; especially for the older students who were much too social in this particular arrangement - thus affecting the above mentioned "on task" and "noise level" issues in the classroom. The younger students adapted well to it and understood the expectation of this particular seating arrangement. Second, teaching in this set up is something I have honed over many years and set as an expectation at home for what the arrangement will be in my particular classroom. Many of my American students have had me for more than one year, and so they are adjusted to it. Also, it is not unusual for other teachers to teach in this arrangement at home; therefore, students are much more adaptable to it. That is not the case here. Most classrooms here are arranged in rows facing front, or in small group clusters, and that is what these students are used to. As I was informed by one student, "no other classroom is arranged this way." The idea that one could see all the people around the room, all the time, was too much of a temptation for students to talk across the horseshoe to other students, whether verbally or non-verbally, and to talk to the student in front of them and or on the sides of them. Thirdly, the furniture with which I was working was perhaps not conducive to this style of seating plan. Rectangular tables and individual plastic chairs do not allow for any personal space for each student. The individual desks and welded chairs in my American classroom provide for personal space for each student, and allow for space between and in front of or behind each student. That was not the case here, and so I am sure that this personal space issue also had much to do with the demise of the horseshoe. In the end the decision to rearrange the classroom into small groups of six students was a serious blow to my desire to bring my "teaching" style to the UK...ok...a serious blow to my ego too. It was upsetting, and indeed, I found myself with tears in my eyes as I rearranged the desks.

Why such an emotional response you may wonder, over a silly little seating arrangement? I wondered the same thing... but, one must understand me and my philosophy behind the horseshoe. Shirking conventional "teacher centered" instructional seating plans, with rows facing front, and getting in and among the midst of my students, within the open space of the floor, and being able to monitor work by only having to see over the top of one head to the student behind, is part of my entire educational philosophy. This seating plan style was certainly not something I began my teaching career with, but over time, as I have become more confident with my skills this is where it has evolved; to dismantle it on this side of the pond made me feel like a rookie teacher all over again, without any skills to even do a simple thing like manage a classroom seating plan and make it work. It is very psychologically damaging to one's confidence.
The upside of this - the new seating arrangement has worked well over the past two days and perhaps one issue - that of the seating plan - will directly affect the other issue - that of keeping students focused and on task during daily lessons. Something tells me this will be the case; especially if today's coursework day was in any way related to the overall seating plan.