Real Talk
Sometimes I think I might go blind from trying to decipher my students’ handwriting. Or go crazy when, five minutes into a lesson, a student shouts, “I need a pencil.” When these happen I wonder, “How did we get here?” How did we get to the point that we expect so little from children and teenagers? Oh sure, we talk about rigor and high standards, and maybe 3rd grade really is the new middle school, but for every inch we’ve raised the bar academically, we have lowered it when it comes to soft skills and basic responsibility.
Here are five very basic skills that teachers can no longer expect from students.
1. Legible handwriting
At the risk of dating myself, I’m old enough to remember when the teacher graded our handwriting. I spent hours practicing and never mastered that beautiful flowing script that many of my friends seemed to produce so effortlessly. But my teachers could read my work, and if for no other reason, that’s a good argument for insisting kids write legibly. After all, teachers have enough to do without spending extra time and energy trying to read the work our kids turn in.
Not only that, but there is a link between the pride and effort students put into their work and the quality of their work. This isn’t true in every case, but often students who have sloppy papers do sloppy work. They rush. They cut corners. And they don’t take their assignments seriously. When we allow kids to turn in work that is messy and illegible, we might be sending a subtle message that our overall expectations are low. However, when teachers encourage kids to take pride in the way their work looks–things like neatness and penmanship–kids are more likely to take pride in the quality of their work as well.
2. Spelling
Elementary teachers teach spelling. So it’s not that the kids aren’t learning it. But somehow by the time many kids get to middle school, they are no longer using what they learned, and that continues through high school. Their spelling is atrocious, and too often teachers don’t feel they can take the time to hold students accountable. This is likely because spelling isn’t a critical component in standardized testing. On high-stakes tests, spelling is usually multiple-choice, so students are only required to recognize misspelled words, not actually spell. When it comes to the writing portion of the test, students are not graded for spelling, and/or they work on a computer, so the spelling is done for them. Perhaps more disturbing than students not knowing how to spell is that often they don’t seem to recognize that spelling is even a thing, that it matters. They care so little about spelling that they don’t even bother to correct the words with red underlines.
3. Homework
The argument about homework and its effectiveness continues to rage among educators, and there are valid points on both sides. But at the very least, students should be expected to take work home that they don’t finish because they were goofing off. It also shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect students to spend a few minutes practicing math facts or reading independently a few times a week. Instead, many teachers have to carve out class time for these kinds of things. This takes away time from new learning or fun activities they would like to do with their kids. This is a case of letting the tail wag the dog. We let kids off the hook when it comes to homework, but ultimately that costs them in other ways. They fail to learn valuable lessons about responsibility and time management skills, and they miss out on important in-person instruction.
4. Having and keeping up with supplies
Students seem to think it’s optional to have a pencil or to come to class with paper. In many schools, the school provides students with the necessary supplies. However, most students don’t manage to keep them from class to class or have them handy when a lesson starts. I’ve had students ask (demand) to borrow a pencil because, by their own admission, they are “too lazy” to dig through their backpacks or pick up the pencil they dropped on the floor earlier in the class. This is not okay. Yes, there are all kinds of reasons a student might not have the supplies he needs. But allowing students to be careless with supplies that are given to them is setting them up for future failure.
5. Dress appropriately
This is not the modesty debate. But surely we can all agree that students should wear actual clothes to school–not pajamas. The reason kids shouldn’t be allowed to wear pajamas to school is the very reason most of them give for wearing them: “I was too lazy to get dressed.” But being at school in pajamas is only going to make them lazy at school. If we are going to claim to use science-based practices, then we have to consider the psychology of enclothed cognition when it comes to educating kids. Researchers have found that what we wear has a powerful impact on how we feel and our behavior. Allowing kids to wear pajamas and other inappropriate clothing to school might very well prevent them from getting into the necessary mindset for learning.
For every issue we face as teachers, there are special cases–poverty, neglect, neuro-diversity, and a host of others–that make things like remembering a pencil or writing legibly extremely difficult or even impossible. But the majority of students are capable of following through with basic expectations or living up to common behavioral standards. Real education should be about helping our students prepare for a successful and productive future with the necessary skills.
Expectations like these were once common. They were not about control or making kids follow a set of arbitrary rules. They were about helping kids become functioning adults. Lowering the responsibility bar in favor of academic standards benefits no one. Instead, we communicate to our kids that we don’t value them or their work enough to worry about the details. We show them in a hundred little ways that the standards and the test are more important to us than who they become.
