Why can’t kids write?

In no way is this a complaint about the majority of my students. For the most part, all of my students are writing papers on their research topics, but in each class there are about three kids who fall into three categories of writing.

First, there are the Hungry.

• The hungry student shows me his/her research.
• “Look at all this research I did! I found 15 pages of stuff online!”
• Sweet! Now how are you going to put that into a paper?
• “I don’t knoooow?!?”
• And there are ways to approach this:
  • a little more one-on-one time with these hungry students would allow me to talk with them about how to put the paper together. I could give them guidelines about how to introduce the topic, how to lead up to the most interesting part of the paper, and how to close off the paper. Sadly, though, in a room of 30 kids, all of whom are using computers, it’s difficult to spend an entire hour discussing this.
  • So I tell them simply: Turn in your notes as your rough draft. I’ll read through them to see what you have, and I’ll gve it back with a boatload of questions to help you shape your paper.
• Regardless, these hungry students don’t turn in anything at all. They don’t even turn in their notes. They just collect more and more information until it’s falling out of their notebooks and piles up underneath the desks in my classroom.
• They’re hungry to learn, but they’re afraid to show what they’ve learned.

And the hungry student isn’t that far away from the majority of my students. The only problem hungry student reall has is the fact that they don’t come to me when they need help, and often i don’t recognize this need until it’s getting too late.

Next we have the Willful.

• The willful student tells me that “Rules are made to be broken” when it comes to MLA standards.
• No, really.
• No, I mean it. They refuse to comply with any of the guidelines I set out for them, walked them through, demonstrated for them (using a computer and a projector), and for which I gave them a handout with explicit instruction and examples.
• The willful students have been turning in papers with one paragraph of writing alongside a handful of pictures they found on the web.
• They turn in printed-out powerpoint slides.
• They do nothing more.

This is upsetting, as this research paper should be relatively simple when it comes to writing. the kids have had practice in many forms of writing, and we’ve talked in class several times about these papers and how they should be structured. We’ve talked about how to put information into a storyline, and they have a plethora of handouts showing them the various aspects of this assignment.

We’ve gone over all of this several times in the past month or so.

I shouldn’t really complain about the hungry or willful, because they’re nothing like the third group of students: The (and I need to borrow a very teacherly word here) Defiant.

• The defiant student has chosen to do nothing at all.
• Sometimes.
  • (and here we need to delineate two types of defiance….types A and B)
  • Type A defiance is characterized by those students who do not remember their research topics. They do not seek out information on their own. They do not read through websites when I pull up the website for them. They do not seek out extra information when I talk with them about the topic they’ve chosen. They do nothing when I try to give them a different, more exciting topic. They just sit in class or in the computer lab and refuse to do anything but talk.
  • Tybe B defiance comes from the students who have obviously done some research and reading outside the classroom. During the class time I see them talking and throwing things around. I see them chatting with other students. I see them getting up and leaving the room. But I never see them doing any work. The curious thing, though is when I call them on this behavior — if I ask them about their topic and they can actually carry on a lengthy conversation about it. They can discuss various aspects about the topic and they can relate it to other aspects they’re not even researching. The problem comes when they don’t do anything about it.

Maybe this is why I find this last group so disturbing. Neither A nor B does anything, in class, about the work. Outside of school they’re fine with doing some sort of work, either out of dedication or boredom, but in class they do nothing. They don’t read, they don’t research, they don’t ask questions, they don’t even “pretend to work” when I stand next to them or call them on their behavior, or stand with them out in the hallway talking about WHY I want them to do this paper (and I’d just like to say that these conversations never turn into “Because you have to” or “Because I said so” or “Because you’ll fail” statements. I try to speak with them about the topic and relate it to their regular lives. I try to bring some perspective, and when the conversations are done, we’ve talked through a paper and I say to them: See? THAT’s the paper I want you to write! I want you to tell me exactly what we just talked about!), they do nothing.

They just won’t do anything. Or, at least, won’t do anything that I’ll see.

The Hungry need a wall broken down somewhere. The need one more little push.

The Willful need to be broken of the idea that I’m going to let their behavior slide. I’m not their other teachers, who, in the face of such disregard for the assignment, pushed them on through.

The Defiant I fear will stay just so.

What to do?

And again, this is maybe a total of about 15 students out of 150. It’s a small group. But if their behavior toward this assignment bothers me this much and I’m able to work with the other 135, I’ve the time to work toward finding an answer.

Any suggestions?