Failing to Make the Grade

Today, in class my Seniors presented their Debate. We have been reading Medea and it was their job to decide whether or not Medea was guilty of murdering her two children. Last week, they had three days to prepare for their 3 minute speech and one minute rebuttal.

To say the least, I was disappointed in about half of the class. Last week my cooperating teacher and I constantly checked to see if they needed help finding sources and how they were coming along. They all said that it would be a piece of cake, so I didn't worry about it.

Today, I hear "But, three minutes is soooooo long" and "I can't talk for threeeee minutes!" I looked at them blankly and told them that they would just have to get through it.

Some students did well. They really researched their topic and had good supporting evidence. I was so proud of them. The other part of the class made me feel like I didn't do a good job and didn't prepare them enough.

Our judging team was another english teacher, my cooperating teacher, and myself. A lot of the students started to have problems at the two minute mark, but were able to make it through by B.S.ing a little bit. One girl hardly made it a minute.

This "Minute Girl" (We will call her "MG" for short) was totally unprepared. She went up and stumbled the entire minute through the speech. She isn't the best at giving class presentations, but she didn't even try. Last week while researching, my cooperating teacher and I kept pushing her to look up information, but she refused. We told her about the debate Monday, but she didn't care. We urged her to go to the library to look up information, but she gave us lip. We just shrugged our shoulders and helped the students who wanted the extra information.

After the debate, I tally'd the individual scores. The highest was a 96. "MG" got a 56. I felt horrible. I gave out my first "F". She did deserve it, but it made me feel guilty, like I had done something wrong. It made me feel like I should have pushed her harder when they were looking for research. It also made me feel like maybe I didn't teach it well enough, like I failed and was the student receiving the 56.

Then, I took a moment to look at the students who did succeed. Maybe I failed MG to some extent, but how did other students strive so well? I did make some impact.

I guess my problem is reaching all students. I can't make students succeed that don't want to. I can try my best to get them to participate, but if they don't want to, they aren't going to. In the next few coming months I will try harder to push MG and try to get her to see the value of what we are doing in class. I am going to try to forge a connection with her. I'm just afraid of failing.