Spite Homework

It is Wednesday morning in my first hour English class. Students were assigned "All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury to read last night, so we could discuss craft elements today. I assign a quick "Somebody Wanted But So" summary to check comprehension (and, to be honest, to make sure they read), and was astounded to see 2/3 of my class start reading the story instead of writing summaries. Not just the three usual suspects, but several others as well. Let's be clear: they were not reviewing to find a minute detail. They simply had not read a short, relatively accessible text.

In my reflective teacher mind, I could go to the place where I remembered that they had not had enough time in class on Tuesday to be hooked into the story. Later that day, I would learn that they had two tests Wednesday, and many students were overwhelmed.

But in that moment, I am angry.

I give a soapbox speech. In my mind, it's so good. It's worthy of a Lifetime movie. But I'm sure it is more a rambling, annoying, rant they all tune out about halfway through. The gist of it is that I am not going to waste 1/3 of the students' time for the 2/3 of students who haven't bothered to do the work. It most certainly includes a line about how hard I work to provide quality instruction for them and how none of it will work if they can't be bothered to read four pages.

After the "character lecture," I give a short academic lecture on literary craft terms I want them to look for in the story and assign them a written post on Schoology for which they have very little scaffolding, sneaking in some more guilt-inducing language about how those that have actually done the reading would have a much smaller amount of homework to complete. They have about 7 minutes to work before the class period is over, certainly not enough time for me to answer questions for those who might be confused.

As the day goes on, I feel sort of terrible about assigning spite homework. It was a punitive move rather than an pedagogical one. As I learn about their tests, I feel worse. I imagine the worst-case scenario that none of my students will complete the assignment and it would just create more follow-through problems for me later. I may even (gasp!) have to admit that I was wrong.

But lo and behold, this morning before 1st hour, every single one of my 19 students has their work--difficult, unscaffolded--complete for class. (Note: I do not Google any of their answers to check their ideas for plagiarism; some good feelings just deserve to be felt.) The work is not perfect, but it is complete. It gives us a starting point to have an excellent discussion. We use the clumsy sentences as a starting point to talk about deeper ideas, and students look at peers' clumsy sentences and know they are not alone. We learn together.

My egotistical takeaway: I've still got it. My speech mattered! Most students care when teachers they know care are disappointed in them.

My non-egotistical takeaway: I am thinking about expectations. I know this was a perfect guilt-induced storm, and I will not abuse the power that my words apparently had on this particular day. But I so often don't send this type of work home because I fear that students will struggle. I want to make sure I am there to support them in this type of analytical thinking when they are doing it early in the instructional process. However, the fear of another Lifetime lecture coupled with a sort-of-achievable task made them all try. They all brought something to the table, no matter how imperfect or tentative. And this is exactly what I want them to do every single day. I don't know where the tipping point is in terms of asking kids to reach beyond what they think they can, but I do know that it might be a little further of a stretch than I usually ask them to do.

So, the questions are these: how do we work to build classroom communities where this type of stretch work is valued every day? How do we build confidence in students so they know their crazy stabs at ideas probably contain kernels of greatness? How do we give enough class time to do some of the work together and assign quality thinking work so the ideas of our discipline seep into the other corners of their lives?