Rigor

Hello everyone,


What constitutes rigor?

To some people it means lots of extra work. To some
teachers the difference between an honors class and
a regular class is the amount of homework they can
assign.

There may be a little truth in that. A rigorous
class certainly expects work, and a class that
doesn't expect any work can hardly be considered
rigorous.

But I hate busy work as much as students do. I have
always hated it when teachers gave me work just to
give me work. Busy work is not rigor.

To me, rigor in the classroom is characterized by several things.

1. High expectations.

A rigorous classroom begins with the assumption that
students will need certain information for college,
and that students will be prepared for college,
whether or not they choose to go. (Rigorous
vocational education assumes that students will need
certain characteristics to enter the work force.
It's the same concept. The majority of us teach
college preparatory classes, but we often teach them
as though we're preparing our students for middle
school, not a university.)

Part of this is giving students the big picture.
Keep in the students' minds that they are expected
to take their places in the world as parents and
workers and voters in a democratic society. They
must gain and use knowledge and skills to do so.
The more knowledge and skills they obtain, the
better off they--and all of society--will be.

2. Difficult material.

I don't mean that we can consider ourselves rigorous
because we're working above the kids' heads. I mean
that we choose the hardest material the curriculum
expects, and we teach to that, holding the kids'
hands (in a metaphorical way) until they get it.

I bring this up because teachers often dumb down the
curriculum because the students have low skills.
This, I believe, is a serious mistake. In English,
just because it is difficult for students to
understand subordinate clauses, doesn't mean that
they shouldn't be taught (many concepts are hard to
understand without the ability to decode subordinate
clauses). College level English is virtually
impossible without them. To avoid the more
difficult parts of the curriculum because of the low
skills of the students often condemns them to a life
constricted by a lack of education.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that presenting
difficult material is the same as teaching it. It
is sometimes very difficult to teach difficult
concepts, and so we merely present the material and
let the understanding slide. Students must
understand the material, not just have it thrown at
them. Some concepts in the lower grade s, however,
may be presented as introductions to the concepts,
and students may come away with a partial
understanding that should be filled in the upper
grades. (Ninth graders' introduction to Shakespeare
is rarely as successful as twelfth graders'
understanding of Shakespeare.) Lecturing on a
difficult topic cannot be considered rigorous unless
you have a classroom full of extraordinary students
who love listening to lectures so much that they
will learn from them better than anything else. You
may feel that you're sugar-coating your material or
spoon feeding it to them. So be it. Just make sure
you're sugar-coating something nutritious, and fill
the spoon with plenty of protein.

3. Reasonable accountability.

This is a delicate area, and I've treated it many
times. I have discovered, however, that if I am
honest with my students about their grades, if I
assess them the same way I would assess any student
in any high school in the United States, and if I
provide ample opportunities for them to grow without
mere busy work, they learn to earn the grade they
really want. That means that I must have the
courage to give them the grade they've earned. I'm
better at explaining this in English or elective
terms, but it essentially means being willing to
give the fail or the A, and everything in between,
regardless of how I feel about a student personally,
if the student truly earned the grade.

If I want a student to work above natural ability,
however, I must provide ways for the grade to
reflect the student's willingness to work in a
rarefied atmosphere (I don't want them to get
discouraged--indeed I find I am often a cheerleader,
urging them to press on and keep trying when
something is especially tough). Some grades must be
for actual achievement; some must be for effort. A
fail in achievement plus an A in effort makes a C in
the class, and I'm OK with that.

Some of our students don't want rigor. I know that.
I know that they will give resistance when you push
them beyond where they may really want to go.
Weather the resistance and take them where they
really NEED to go.


Jeff Combe