Test Results Day

I got my students’ exit exam results late Tuesday afternoon. It’s a Tuesday/Thursday morning class, so on Wednesday I carefully composed two email messages, which I sent to the two groups – those who passed, those who didn’t. I stressed that this information is private, that we would not discuss their individual results in class, and that they should bring their questions and concerns directly to me rather than discussing them with each other.

However, I knew that many of them would not see my email until they came to class this morning and heard some buzz. Then, I feared, they would check their email and erupt, one way or another, during class, at unpredictable times. I did not want my lesson plan derailed by this drama – I did not want the students acting out the drama in class at all. So I staged a bit of a performance myself, preemptively.

I arrived at the classroom just on the early side of late. They were almost all there, waiting in the hall – they are locked out until I arrive. They flowed in around me, chatting about how they were about to give up on me. I raised my voice slightly and asked them to go ahead and have a seat, but not to turn on their computers, that I wanted to talk to them first. “We’re going to have a pep talk,” I said.  I heard several of them repeat the instruction to each other not to turn on the computers. Thanks, you guys, you rock. (I love this class.)

The pep talk went more or less like this: “Some people passed, some people didn’t. If you passed, I am proud of you. You deserved to pass, and you earned it. If you didn’t pass, it doesn’t mean that you’re dumb, or that you’ll never make it into English 1101. It just means that the readers had a problem with one essay that you wrote on one day. I will meet with you, and we will figure out what you should do next. I know I can’t stop you from checking your email here in class to find out your results, but here’s what you are going to do. You are going to be absolutely stone-faced. There will be no cheering or gloating, but there will also be no pissing and moaning. No reaction at all, not in this room. You can talk about it outside the room with your friends, but not in here. You can come to my office and cry, I have the Kleenex ready. But in here, you are going to act like a grownup and keep it to yourself.”

They were listening. I watched them as I was saying all this, and I could see they got it. A few of them were nodding at me. Ok, here we go, turn on your computer, here is the handout, this is what we’re working on today, please log into Blackboard, and open Microsoft Word. It felt almost normal. I kept on acting like everything was normal, and they fell in with me. Sometimes I tell a student, “Fake it till you make it.” We faked it, and we made it.

Today’s lesson plan was about writing the reflective letters for their final portfolios. In particular, we were focusing on the first paragraphs, in which they were to tell prospective readers (either instructors or future students) about how they landed in developmental writing and how they had changed during the course. I gave them 15 minutes to draft their paragraphs, then asked them to share an idea. As I called on them, some sort of magic happened. One after another, they shared stories about how much their experiences of writing had changed. One student said he never cared about anything he wrote about in high school, that writing papers was just a chore, but now that he knows how to define a topic he cares about, writing is much easier. Another said that whenever she had to write an essay in class in high school, she felt she had to perform perfectly on the spot, but that now she understands how to start out freely and think about the topic, letting her ideas evolve and grow over time. One after another, theme and variations, so perfect and beautiful I could have wept.

As they listened to each other, they too heard the power of the changes they have created for themselves this term. We passed, all of us, in that moment together, on this day.