June 10, 2024
Inspiration Batsheva’s Children Book Gets a Failing Mark
Years ago, I taught writing to high school students.
I was passionate about my subject and tried to infuse my students with the same passion I felt. Whenever I assigned different genres of writing I did my own homework. I wrote poetry and short stories and personal narratives and plays and pictorial essays and interviews and children books. Often my students were more talented than I could ever be. And I let them know that. But, I told them, I have experience and I could teach them so that they could far outstrip me in their talent. And I took pleasure in that happening.
My marking system was very simple. I assigned a writing genre. I taught a multitude of mini-lessons on the genre. I created a check list of all the mini-lessons. If a girl incorporated all the things I had taught, she received a full score on her writing. There was no such thing as losing a grade because of lousy grammar or spelling. I was very specific as to which grammar skills I taught and a girl was only scored on those grammar skills. So the most a girl could lose on grammar was two points for each skill she neglected to incorporate.
Quotation marks missing? The most that I took off, despite absolute chaos in quotation mark punctuation was two points. Past and present tenses inconsistent? Two points. Misspelled words? Two points.
"By the time I was ready to leave for work, I pulled her book out one more time. Ripped up the marking sheet and redid the scores to give her somewhere in the high 90's."
So, as you can imagine, my students hardly got lower than a 90 on any given writing assignment. And it seemed pretty fair to me, as each writing assignment took about 3 months to complete and tens of hours of drafting, revising, and editing. For most girls, by the time they handed in their writing assignments, their words were blood on their papers. And I dared not spill any of that blood with red marks of my pen. I used purple or green pen. Or pencil. Or, if a girl requested it (in the days before computers and Microsoft Word), I used only the Post-It notes she handed in together with her writing art, and stuck those notes with my comments wherever I needed to point out the problems. It was much easier, those solemn girls explained, to white-out their mistakes if I didn’t scribble all over it with my comments.
Which is why, when I collected my students’ childrens books, I was disappointed beyond belief by Batsheva’s work. It was a children’s book about having a birthday.
It was the end of the year and I must have been rushed to finish. Somehow, I had not managed to work sufficiently with Batsheva and was upset by the mediocrity of her writing. It was silly. Pointless. Childish. Definitely not up to par with a tenth grader’s writing abilities or prospects. Definitely not what I expected. I don’t remember even what I did expect her to deliver because she was a student that actually melted into the background. It seemed to me a haphazard piece of work, an end-of-the-year kind of I-have-no-patience-for-school-anymore writing.
The truth? I was a little angry at her for even thinking she could pass this off as a serious writing assignment for even me to consider marking.
I pulled out a new marking paper, the kind I described above, and slaughtered her writing in it. I took off two points for every single thing that when I was finally finished, her mark hovered somewhere between a 60 and 70. Because it was a children’s book with illustrations in it, I used only pencil to correct her many mistakes. None of which were grammar and spelling, I may add.
Satisfied with my revenge on her mediocrity and seeming laziness, I put her children’s book away.
I finished marking all the other students’ works, and came out with the 90’s I usually managed to administer. A student that received less than a 96 on her work, already felt slighted. Writing is not like math, where if you get the answer wrong it reflects on you ability to do math. No. Writing is writing, for goodness sake, where if your teacher makes you feel you have gotten it wrong, it’s like the student is somehow wrong. Her very essence is wrong! So a student’s ego could take no less than a 96. And despite the principal’s disapproval with the very lopsided Bell Curve of my students’ marks, I merrily gave most girls high 90’s on their writing assignments all year. And for the girls whose 94 disturbed them enough, they were able to fix their mistakes, learn some more writing skills, and receive half of their points back.
And my students, for the most part, took their writing very, very, very seriously.
They wrote and sweated and sweated some more. Part of my students grades was to submit their manuscript for publishing in some way. So one girl’s play became her older sister’s third grade performance and one girl’s essay on cheating in her school found its way into a local magazine, under a pseudonym of course.
And Batsheva’s children’s book rankled me to no end.
I pulled it out again, and looked it over. I ripped up the checklist and took out a fresh marking paper and sighed as I added back enough points to give her a mark in the eighties. It didn’t deserve it, I thought, but I could not hurt Batsheva that much. She was a good kid. I didn’t really think she had handed in such work out of pure laziness. Maybe just a little overwhelm with the rest of her subjects. She wasn’t the brightest student, after all. I sighed a little more and erased some of the angry penciled marks in her book.
The next morning, as I was getting ready for school, I took out Batsheva’s children’s book again. I ripped up the second marking paper and erased some more penciled comments in her book, replacing them with some complimentary remarks. Then I re-scored her check list, giving her a mark somewhere in the low 90’s. I was growing more certain, that no matter how mediocre her work was, it was not a result of sloppiness or laziness. Maybe just a reflection of her ability. I sighed again.
By the time I was ready to leave for work, I pulled her book out one more time. Ripped up the marking sheet and redid the scores to give her somewhere in the high 90’s.
“So what,” I thought to myself. “So it’s a childish, silly book. She worked on it and that’s what matters. Oh well.”
I returned all the books that day, including Batsheva’s.
At the end of the year, I ask my students to evaluate their work and my class.
This is what Batsheva wrote, “I loved your class and learned so much. I became such a confident writer and I am the one who writes the poems for my family get-togethers now. Everybody asks me for poems for birthdays and it is so much fun to write. But the best writing of all was the children’s book that I wrote. I spent hours on it making it perfect. The theme of the book, about birthdays, is very important to me. My father, when he was alive, always celebrated our birthdays and asked us to take upon ourselves new goals in honor of our birthdays. Mrs. Blumenfeld, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity of putting my father’s message into a book that I can read to my younger siblings and eventually to my own children.” Love, Batsheva.
Yes, it scares me so much to think what would have happened had I forgotten that my students are people too. And handed Batsheva that failing mark.
Thank you Batsheva. Your writing is magnificent. And your words will leave an impact.
Originally published in Binah Magazine
