Recipes for Fast Rising Muffins

So, I mentioned earlier that one of my summer projects was teaching writing to a group of high school kids coming in for six weeks. We've just finished week three, and Sweet Jesus, I'm not sure if I ever want to do it again. These kids come from local high schools and are allegedly the cream of their crop. They're all (potential) first generation college students, and the goal is to try to make them think college is a good choice for them, to sort of give them a taste of it without scaring the beJesus out of them. They dorm here during the week, take English, math, bio and a foreign language, and then go home over the weekend. I thought I was getting high school seniors or maybe juniors. I thought, OK, that's close enough to the demographic I work with to be acceptable. So I signed on.

What I got instead were four eighth graders; they call them "fast rising ninth graders" which makes them sound like some sort of baked good to me, but four fucking eighth graders. The high school seniors all went to another English class they're getting actual credit for. Rounding out the roster were three freshman, two juniors and and five sophomores. Oh, and one homeschooled kid whose grade level they didn't know and one senior who is in special ed. Speaking of special ed, it turned out I had three students who spent time regularly there. I have no training in learning disabilities per se, and they're lucky I worked in a nonprofit that dealt with them. Working with these kids has been something of an eye-opener for me. There is still a big cognitive and emotional gap between a 16-17 year old and an 18-19 year old. Other things I've noticed...

They all have "behaviors." That's what they call them and that's what the staff calls them. They don't "behavior" in my class, they do it everywhere else, though. But I get to hear about it. Or watch them skulk in, and all I say is "Behaviors?" And they'll nod. It's actually kind of funny. Sitting through conferences with them is bizarre. It's the only time I've ever thought, "Wow, is this person the most vulnerable human being I've ever seen!" And I simultaneously wanted to slap them as hard as I can. They haven't made the intellectual leap to "Why" instead of "What" yet. So they spend their journals talking about how they didn't like the person who wrote the article -- but they still won't even tell me why. When I introduce the concept of "Why", it's like I've mentioned men have landed on the moon. I have two who are stuck on themselves academically. They've both said out loud that they never have to study for anything in high school, so they're pretty sure college is going to be a breeze. I stopped class and sat down I was laughing so hard. I'm pretty sure that's against the law, but I couldn't help it. After I wiped my tears away, I tried to explain that in college, everybody else is more or less just like you academically. You might be Queen Principal's List in high school -- but when you come to college, you find out so was everybody else, and the Dean's List is a lot harder to crack. The "average" college student is probably a little brighter than the "average" citizen -- but in a room full of themselves, you're just average.

They also think they're the next Stephen King or Stephanie Myers, and I've begun to use an analogy for that to help them cope with the fact that the scribblings they have might just need more work. El Hijo came up with it actually. It's a sports metaphor. When you're young, anybody can play ball -- they make allowances for everyone, and the same is true for young writers. But when you get into high school, the talent gets cropped, and the same is also true of writers. If you want to write at the "high school level," you have to have been fairly good at it when you were younger. But if you want to go to college and play sports, well, you have to be even better -- and the same is true for writing, especially creative writing. Selling a book? Well, that's like being in the NBA. I told them they needed to think of best selling authors as the Shaquille O'Neal's of their field. Writing isn't the same as publishing which isn't the same as being popular and selling. Playing isn't the same as making the team, which isn't at all the same as being drafted for the NBA. I think they got it. I told them if they wanted to publish like that, they would have to have the same dedication to writing as basketball players did to making the college team in the hopes they would be drafted. It's sort of sobering to think about, but it's true, really. But I digress.

The students and their "behaviors" really aren't the worst part. The idiot TA is the worst part. He has "behaviors" all his own. I knew they got a tutor for each class, but I didn't realize the tutor was required to sit in on my classes. I call him a TA to make him feel better, but I had no obligation to use him in class. When I first met him, he showed up to the office in a full suit, was incredibly loud and fairly obnoxious. He cut me off regularly, dismissed most of what I had to say, and made everything about him, him, him. At the end of the session, I finally just turned to him and said "Look, you're going to have to lose the suit. I know you think it's about authority, but it's not. It's about trust. It's the summer, most of them are 14 years old, just lose the suit, OK?" And he did. He didn't lose the attitude, though.

Some of that attitude is understandable. He's twenty-two, he came from a really poor area on scholarship and got to study abroad for grad school (he's finishing his Masters this summer). He got to see a little bit of the world on top of that on the university's dime, and he feels proud of himself. The problem is, he came into the classroom which was made up of kids who came from exactly where he did, and talked down to them. He made them feel like they could never be like him because their grammar sucked. He wasn't trained to teach people how to write, so all he could do was sit there and criticize. In a way, it's not his fault. He's not a teacher. Some people just have the teacher-gene. They understand how to explain things to people. Some people are just better off doing that thing than explaining it to others. Like Chemistry profs at a university -- most suck at teaching, but they're awesome at actually doing and studying Chem. This tutor-person made one of them cry. They hate him. They roll their eyes when he turns around. Well, all but one, the cute little 14-15 year old in the front row. She flirts with him and he's stupid enough to flirt back. It's very mild, and I really don't think he even understands what's going on, and I certainly don't think he would ever, ever do anything wrong. But he doesn't understand what he's setting himself up for. The first day of class he tried talking over me, and I put him down swift and hard. We're not co-teachers. I'm in charge. I don't mind sharing authority, but you don't have the right to come in and take it. He didn't do it any more after that.

If I had another six to eight weeks with him instead of three, I could probably shape him into something. He has taken more attention and thought toward his "development" than any of my Behavior Muffins have. But it doesn't matter anyway -- they're firing him come Monday.

All in all, it's sort of been an OK experience. Most of them have shitty self-esteem, and seeing how they can actually do the work is empowering. Seeing how high school isn't the be-all, end-all of your experience is empowering, too. Almost all of them have expressed a keen desire to get out of Small Town, West Virginia, and they all seem to recognize that college is key to that.

How could a recipe turn out any better than that?

-- DV