Mission High : One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph (9781568584621) by Rizga Kristina

Author:Rizga, Kristina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Published: 2015-05-12T21:55:20+00:00

It was nine in the morning, and Pablo was late for his English class with Pirette McKamey. He was a junior, and this was going to be his first mainstream English class after two years of work in classes for English learners. Pablo didn’t think his English was strong enough to be in Ms. McKamey’s class. He struggled with speaking in public and with writing, especially with punctuation and grammar.

Once Pablo found his new class, he tried to open the door as quietly as he could, hoping Ms. McKamey wouldn’t notice that he was late.

McKamey stopped in midsentence. “What is your name?”

“Pablo.”

“Oh, I’ve heard a lot of great things about you!” McKamey said with a smile. “Welcome. Now, why are you late, Pablo?”

“I couldn’t find the right room,” Pablo apologized.

“We already got started, but please have a seat.”

Pablo heaved a sigh of relief and found an empty seat in the back.

“Last semester, my English class had a few Cs,” McKamey said, returning to her lesson. “Everyone else had As and Bs. I will teach you the key to get an A in my class, and it’s not about memorizing. You will learn how to write. You will learn how to research and analyze. You will learn how to write about others, and this will help you learn a lot about yourself. In my class, everyone starts with an A or a B, and it will be your job to keep it from going down. We will be writing every day, thinking critically, pushing ourselves, and if you work hard, we will have a lot of happy As. By the end of this class, writing essays will feel like eating candy.”

After introductions, Pablo and his classmates read a short story by Sherman Alexie, “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” in which a young man goes on a quest to repurchase his grandmother’s traditional Native American regalia from a pawnshop. Once students had read and discussed the story with each other, Ms. McKamey asked everyone to write a response to it.

The next time Pablo came to Ms. McKamey’s class, she had already graded and returned everyone’s essays. Pablo looked at her comments; they were different from other comments he had seen on his previous essays. In the past, most of his written work had come back with a lot of red marks and feedback focused on his weaknesses. The majority of his papers got Ds or Cs and often left Pablo feeling hopeless about his ability to improve. Ms. McKamey’s marks and comments focused on his strengths, and she gave him specific suggestions on what to do to improve. Instead of just saying, “Add more detail,” or “not clear,” his drafts were dotted with many stars next to specific sentences or paragraphs with comments like, “Oh, I like this. Can you tell me what colors, sounds, and smells you noticed?” and “This is a very interesting point. Can you tell me more about what you are thinking here? Do you see any

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