When we returned to the land of Itch in January, heading into semester exams, my main goal with my students was to finally attack and conquer a real essay. Last fall, when we dwelt in the land of Scratch, I did assign an essay topic; but after several days, I abandoned that worthy goal and cancelled the essay. I had a hunch they might have turned out to be disastrous.
I adjusted my sights and made my goals clear for the first half of the year: I wanted my young scholars to think well and speak well. I would save the “…and write well,” for later, as soon as we accomplished those first two goals.
Writing an essay is not a simple task, yet I love teaching and nurturing how to craft an effective essay. Oh my—I mean it is never as simple as the lame 8th grade English teacher at Gamble Jr. High who said, “Now boys and girls it is all about form—an essay must be a 5 paragraph theme.” Of course, it should also never be as fear-inducing as a certain Western Hills High School English teacher who warned: “Now boys and girls—later this year we will write a 500-word essay!” As if the apocalyptic specter of that awful prospect should make us quake, or run away and join the circus or something!
One of the reasons I got my job at Charlotte Latin School in 1990—big gulp at the acknowledgement of the swift passage of time—was that I staked my claim at being a commanding History teacher with the phrase in the cover letter, “I make it my business to create effective writers with my historians.” (I was told this was a reason for my hire by the department head, so I am not just tooting my own horn. And for the record, another of the reasons I got my job at Charlotte Latin School in 1990—no grey hair then I assure you—was that I had a degree from an ivy league school. I was told that by the upper school head, so I am not just tooting my own horn.)
When exactly do we learn how to write effective essays? It is fun thinking about that historical journey. When I was in the 2nd grade, home for several months in the body cast after the car accident, my mother made sure I wrote stories often. Do those count? And in Miss Wilson’s class in the 5th grade, she had us write many expository essays. Were the essays in Jeannie Michaels’ AP history classes the gems I thought at the time? I remember that I got a 100 on an essay freshman year at Denison, but then I soon had a professor berating me about my enervating use of the passive voice in my writing. By the time I was at Brown and Columbia—well, I was certainly speedier at writing essays, but it is hard to say when they started being effective.
So—the goal was set. I came up with a good topic. Writing an effective essay is like being an actor in search of a great scene in which you can practice emotion. You need a great topic. I rounded up five documents, and gave the students the documents, and then on the proverbial silver platter, handed them the topic:
Using all of the documents, or all but one of the documents, compare and contrast the attitudes toward women as found in various cultures from about 1800 BCE until about 300 CE. Are there indications of change over time?
I had set aside almost an entire week for us to digest the topic and work through 9 steps until we reached the nirvana of an effective essay. We hashed out, for nearly one whole class the following four questions: What do the directions say? What do the directions mean? Based on the question, what do you know the documents are about? What are you being asked to do?
By that time, everybody had a good sense as to what the assignment was. We stole a quick look at the five documents: an excerpt from the Babylonian law code of Hammurabi, a few verses from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, an excerpt from the Hindu sacred text, Rig Vedas, an advice book by a woman (!) from Han dynasty China, and a passage from Plutarch’s Lives from Rome. We made a timeline of when the documents originated. By the time they went home that day, they had memorized the topic, and knew what they should look for. I told them to come in the following day having worked those documents. Notice I did not say “having read the documents.” Reading is too passive! They needed to summarize and break apart those documents! Could they do what I was asking??
The following day was one of the top 5 days of academic pursuits in my world history classes at KA. These students came to class focused and fired up about these ancient attitudes toward women. “This sounds like they are no more than slaves!” “I think it is worse—women are no more than objects!” Students played with the semantics of the documents in ways I had not seen them do before. In the Law Code document it was mentioned that judges would decide if a woman was guilty or not in a divorce suit, and a student wondered, “Yeah, but are the judges fair to women?” In our 45-minute discussion of the 5 documents one students’ eyes got big, and she said, “You know what—people were afraid not to follow these rules, because three of the five documents are said to come from the gods! You had to follow these rules! They are sacred.” While it was exciting for them to note that the author of the Chinese document was a woman, a student pondered, “But she is saying that for a marriage to work, the woman must recognize her inferiority—do you think she had to say that? Do you think the emperor made her say that?”
On the third day we built a framework:
Similarities in attitudes toward women
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Differences in attitudes toward women
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We filled up the white board with our similarities and differences.
Now came the hard part. We had to think a little more. We had to move from breaking down the sources to evaluating the sources and pondering: Have there been any changes in attitudes toward women in the 2000 years of the documents? What are the changes? How do we define, or explain the changes?
Before we moved to the hard part of writing up this whole essay, I wanted to isolate that very important and very elusive element of essay writing: crafting a thesis statement. Thesis statements can be a thing of beauty, or they can be the stupidest rehash of the topic. It always made sense to me to explain that a thesis statement is an argument, not an announcement. Case in point: the trumpet sounds and the mediocre writer types: “There were similarities and differences in attitudes toward women over time.” I hopped and skipped around class explaining the difference between an argument and an announcement (an argument boasts a how and/or a why!!!!) so we might avoid such banalities.
In order for us to understand this better, we devoted the next day to a Thesis Statement Beauty Pageant. Each student had to write a thesis statement in 50 words or less, and email it to me that night. The following day I had collated all the t. statements and cut and pasted them on a sheet. We then had a swim suit and an evening gown competition. Yes, I know it sounds silly, but it works! It’s funny, eccentric, and then we read, digest, evaluate and judge the entries. It is anonymous and we all read all the entries so as to get a sense as to what a thesis statement looks like, and which ones are beautiful. When we had narrowed the contestants down to three, we had a final judging, and then I crowned the winner of the Thesis Statement Beauty Pageant!
The pageant went well, and they chose strong thesis statements. Okay…they had the weekend to put our week’s work into an effective essay. Could they do it? I gave them a rubric so as to help them see how I would grade their work. I knew that at this early stage it would be foolish and unwise to put much weight on grammar and eloquence. My young scholars were just learning to write more than a paragraph in English—the poetry part of effectiveness can wait. Here is my rubric:
Grading Rubric—I will grade you one point for each of the following
Did you use all, or all but one of the documents? 1 point
Did you write a thesis? 1 point
Have you supported your thesis with specific quotations? 1 point
Do you understand the documents well? 1 point
Have you analyzed for bias or point of view? 1 point
Have you synthesized the documents in groups? 1 point
Have you compared documents instead of merely listing? 1 point
Have you written a conclusion, reflected, and thought
about change over time? 1 point
Just to add a little suspense…I will write an entry in a day or so with examples from their work and we can then judge how my historians did…
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