Student Surveys

This weekend I have spent a bit of time entering grades on the first couple of assignments my students have had. Easy grading since I'm not reading much of it. It's all about participation points!

I will say, though, that the student surveys my classes have filled out have given me any number of things to laugh about at the moment. The seventh grade set may be deficient in many ways in terms of maturity and behavior but when they write they are often shamelessly blunt and I love them for it. Consider the following:

Question: What sort of qualities do you think a good teacher should have?

Answers:

• Teaching qualities.
• Pactence (Patience, I'm assuming.)
• "I think they should be nice and loud."

Question: Why would being able to read and write be important to you throughout your life?

Answer: "cause if your driving and you cant read the stop sign that would stink"

Answer: "so your not dumb"

Answer: "To write checks."

Question: What do you think makes someone a good reader? (What do good readers do?)

Answer: read Hairy Potter (A clever pun? Or honest spelling mistake?)

"My favorite movie is Titanic because it's sad and intrataning"

"One thing I do well as a writer is try to make it instistring."

"I wish I could read books about blood."

Question: When I have to read I: _____

Answer: Read. (Hilarious. And true.)

Some answers kind of make me go "wait. . . what?!" For example:

Question: What have you disliked about previous English classes:

Answer: "Saying it"

"With my friends, I like to take, _____________" (there wasn't anything listed after the "take")

Or:

"My favorite movie is Twilight because its romantic in ways that I can say."

Their spelling, too, is entertaining, and adds further proof to the point that English is far from the most intuitive language in terms of spelling. Because for all their mistakes, these kids are incredibly intuitive in how they spell things, even when they are wrong:

• Scients
• Perswasive
• noligabul

Really, though, I love how wonderfully blunt and unintentionally funny these kids are. Several of them owned up to being paid for good grades. One said that she gives her report card to her parents and then runs. One said that the best thing he does as a writer is gives an example of bad writing. Another that they do well as writers because they "read the fix", whatever that means.