Health & Fitness
Bring A Pen to Class Every Day
This was the first installment that should have appeared last Friday, July 19, 2013. I could write a book about writing implements. But I wouldn’t write about my preferences of color or style; or about prices or the history of the ballpoint pen; or about how to remove ink stains from your favorite shirt. What I’d like to speak about is the way that writing implements encapsulate all the issues of teaching. If I was a good enough writer I could show you what it means to be a teacher simply by describing how to get writing implements into the hands of pupils. Unfortunately my description will probably also demonstrate many of the reasons you will think me an unsatisfactory San Leandro employee. This subject is so full of import that I expect it to take three weekly columns for me to plumb the whole topic. You’d think it would be easy. Yet solving the problems associated with writing implements is a daily, unrelenting battle. It is one of the areas in which my students and I play out the issues of daily classroom life. It reveals all the hidden issues that make a classroom a fun, dangerous, ridiculous, enriching, sophomoric, frustrating place for my students and I to inhabit. All that needs to happen is for each of my 30+ to possess and use a writing implement that can produce legible script. Since I teach English that means mostly words. Pencils might fulfill this requirement. Most ninth grade classrooms feature the extensive use of pencils. I don’t allow my students to write with pencils except for puzzles and drawings. My reasons are twofold: first pencils are often illegible—too faint; second I think it is my job to push my students into the adult world of words and to me that means writing with something more permanent, like a pen. The first day of the new school year I tell my students that they must bring a pen to class every day. How naïve of me. The second day of the school year someone doesn’t bring a pen, often more than one person. (Same for the third day and the fourth, ad infinitum.) That presents me with my first big disciplinary issue of the year. Should I punish those who don’t have the necessary “school supplies”? I don’t. I don’t do it mainly because (and here you may think me nuts) I want to handle issues like this with reasons rather than punishments. My rationale for this come from a writer named Alfie Kohn. It’s a complex subject that I can’t cover here so let’s simply stipulate that I don’t want to use punishments to try to get every kid to bring a pen to class. There is also the common sense realization that punishment is a game of diminishing returns. The more you try to use them, the less effect they have. I’d rather save this weapon for more significant issues. But that puts me back where I started. How do I get every kid to have a pen every day? I asked other teachers about this and got some good suggestions, which is how I came to my present system. I buy boxes of pens. I put them in my desk. I tell every kid, I won’t accept any work that is not done in pen. If they didn’t bring their own pen they can obtain one from me. They can buy one for twenty-five cents. (My cost) Or they can surrender one of their shoes in exchange for one of my pens. You might think this was the end of this subject but we are far from done with this tale of the pen. More next week.