The Four Students

At the end of the school year, report cards are sent out, eliciting varying responses in students. Some have worked hard and achieved superb results; others coasted and failed. It’s on neither of these that I lavish my attention. It’s with those who worked hard and emerged disappointed that I am most concerned. They are the ones in need of encouragement, in need of direction, in need (in short) of teaching. But their needs surface in different ways, usually in my inbox, after reports have been sent out. They can be broken down into four kinds of students, with four responses.

The first student, the wise one, sends an email stating that they are disappointed in themselves. They tried hard, and yet didn’t meet their expectations. What can they do to improve? Can they send practice essays over the summer for feedback? What kind of study schedule should they build?

I write these students back my most supportive responses. We can do it, I write (we are in this together), it is a process, and I map it out for them in meticulous detail. You’ve worked hard, and already come so far—I can see what you can’t, and it’s your trajectory to success. I write these emails carefully, because more than anything, I want them to believe in my belief in them—and then to transcend it, no longer need it, sustained in their own belief in themselves.

The second student, the unethical student, sends an email much like the first. They tried hard, and didn’t meet their expectations. What can they do to improve? Is there a chance I might rethink their grade?

It’s this last question that differentiates them from the first student. The first is interested in learning and improving their skills, the second, in improving their score. I write a fiery email about corruption and ethics, and then delete it, and instead craft a measured email about how I grade blind (covering every student’s name with sticky notes, so that I don’t know whose work I am grading) and changing a grade simply because a student had the initiative to ask for it, would be morally wrong. I suggest ways to improve and offer feedback, but my focus is on the student’s personal ability to improve. This student will only be capable of hard work after accepting that improvement of their performance, not their grade, is what is at stake; that the change has to come from them, not from me. It’s moral education, rather than English or Psychology, that I’m attempting here. 

The third student doesn’t email me—their parents do. This student is enfeebled by parents who have kept them dependent. Rather than helping the student draft their email to me, these parents jump in on their own, cutting through the student-teacher relationship that I’ve worked so hard to build, and trying to achieve for their child instead of helping their kid manage for themselves. Sometimes, I get to respond that their child is wise, and has already emailed me. But often I am left with the sense that I am educating them, rather than their child.

The last student is the one that concerns me the most; the student who doesn't email. They receive their report, and their face drops, and then they leave the room, and I don’t hear from them. I know what they don’t—that with work, they can succeed—but they are so firmly entrenched in their belief that they will fail that it is difficult to reach them—they have stopped checking school email, or attending tutoring, or responding to reassurance. I wait for a response to my encouragement, and wish for a way to break through. And think to myself that, next year, I will teach better, clearer, more grippingly, the only thing that matters—that learning is, after all, a process, and the main thing is not to despair during the journey but to keep moving forward.

 I have two weeks until I begin teaching in Ashkelon. A good fortnight for a break from my regular IB teaching, during which I’ll do the things that teachers do on their vacations: grade, plan, study content knowledge, and spend at least four hours a day reading or at the beach. Ah, summer vacation-- when teachers work only as much as a non-teacher does during the year. I'm looking forward to it!

*Any resemblance to the four sons of the Haggadah is entirely coincidental.