I am wordy. There’s not denying it. I am rarely at a loss for words, words flow from me, words are my artistic medium. This is what I usually tell people when I admit to them that I like writing report card comments.

To be fair, writing 75-85 short paragraphs isn’t easy, and it can feel like Groundhog Day to keep churning out a repeated comment structure that has some repetitiveness to it. Despite all this, I do like writing them.

First, report card comments have a real audience. We talk all the time about giving students authentic audiences for their work, and any of us who have had our students share their writing with families, a writing competition, or the community, you can attest that the writing is better when real eyeballs other than yours are on it. I’d argue the writing is better because the students engage with it more. They care.

Thus it is for me. I care when I write these comments. I know that as a parent, I read my own kids’ comments very closely, often two or three times. I can assume that my students’ parents are also reading them like this.

Of course, some may be thinking that not every parent is reading the comments that closely, if at all. But the chance that even a handful of parents read them makes them meaningful. I also don’t have any reason not to believe that parents who don’t read the comments are the exception, not the rule. At the lunch table yesterday, more than one teacher told the story of a parent quoting their report card comment back to the teacher in a conference.

I also don’t often get the opportunity to talk about a kid like this, in a written form, without interruption. Most times when we talk about kids, it’s a conversation, or perhaps an email, with interruptions and back and forths. But report card comments are my chance to boil down my thoughts and impressions of a kid and their work into an uninterrupted little nugget of text. There’s room for me to think, write, re-read, and revise. I would liken report card comments to a thank you card or a note delivered to someone on a special occasion. Those are meaningful notes, and they usually contain the kinds of things that don’t get said on a daily basis.

My comment writing process is my own, and I know every teacher has one. My husband, David, writes the rough and the final draft all in one go. He doesn’t stand up from the computer until the kid’s comment is done, perfect and ready to be turned in. I, on the other hand, write a messy first draft in a tornado of key strokes. I sit down and compose wildly, without re-reading. Of course, I have a rough structure that I use for each comment, so it’s not a total chaotic mess. I also write with correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in the first draft. Typos will inevitably slip in, but it’s not an untamed mess.

Then, I let the comments go cold, which is writer speak for I don’t look at them for a day or two. Then, I re-read. I can usually spot any problems right away. If I can, I take another break from them and then return to paste them into our online gradebook system. That’s my last chance to read each one over and make sure the tone is right and no mistakes lingered.

I often take things away in the final re-read and paste. I usually have a line with a bit too much emotion that doesn’t belong. I let myself keep it in the early drafts as a little gift to myself. I can usually tell on that third re-read if the wording is off or I’m straying from the objective and constructive. To err is human.

Just yesterday I submitted final report card comments for 72 students, totally 7,943 words. And I wrote every single one of those words. I did not use predictive text, AI, chatbots, or Grammarly. I didn’t even use a comment bank. I wrote and revised each of those 7,943 words with no more than spellcheck.

This year, I had to refer 6 students to our administration for academic dishonesty, specifically for using AI to write part or all of an assignments for them. The consequences were wide-ranging based on how many times the student has plagiarized in the past, but some of the consequences were severe and had a real impact on their educational trajectory.

To me, my statement about my own comment writing and the students I have caught using AI are of a piece. It’s been a rough year for cheating and academic dishonesty. I’ve spent hours documenting and investigating what a student did, using Chrome attachments that can play a document history like a movie, AI checkers, TurnItIn reports, and good old fashioned “this doesn’t sound like a 17 year old wrote it.” I’ve sat down for conversations where I had to ask a student to explain very sophisticated vocabulary or a reference that I’ve never seen a high school student use.

It’s been demoralizing. It undermines not only the educational goals of the classes I teach, but it also touches on some core beliefs I have as a person about the power of writing, of voice, of expression.

So how could I ask a robot to write a comment about a kid I spent the last 10 months with? How could a Large Language Model understand the challenges a kid faced as a second language learner, or the anxiety a junior felt in an individual oral exam, or the way a freshmen dug deep into an academic journal article about Plato’s Symposium? What does a bot know of joy, triumph, frustration, or tears?

I can hear Taylor Mali telling me what teachers “make” in my head right now, “I can make a C+ feel like a congressional medal of honor and I can make an A- feel like a slap in the face.” Has Gemini or QuillBot ever spent an afternoon extra help session helping a kid identify personification, symbols, metaphors? Sure, it can scrape the internet for other writers’ ideas about poetic devices, but has it sat and read Juliet’s soliloquy before her suicide, in a room full of teenagers, and sifted through the iambic pentameter to find how odd and thrilling it is to contemplate her use of the word “rust” as she uses an apostrophe to speak to the dagger she will plunge into her chest: “there rust and let me die”? Has ChatGPT listened as your teacher tells you that until the 20th century there was a censoring of that word rust. The Victorians found it too graphic for a lady, so they changed it to “rest” and that revision of Shakespeare lasted until the 1960’s, when scholars decided to restore the original word, discomfort and grotesque imagery and all. And how when this teacher went home from college after the Shakespeare course she took, she found her mother’s old college copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare on the shelf, fanned through the collected works to find Juliet in Act 5, and there, would you believe it, is Juliet telling the dagger to calmly “rest” in her chest. And isn’t that just a moment to pause and think about the power of the original words. The power of the choice that Shakespeare made, even if it’s odd or perplexing (does she imagine her hot blood will rust the dagger, or that the dagger will stay in her chest for eternity?), but that is what Shakespeare intended. And Shakespeare, like all of us, was just a human being–a talented human being, but a quirky, imperfect one even still.

I know that AI is alluring. Even just to plug in your first draft, as I had students do this year, into a bot that can correct your grammar, smooth out your word choice, and amp up your sentence construction. No more agonizing over where to put the period, or if (gasp!) perhaps a semi-colon is needed, if you can manage to remember the rules for using a semicolon. Writing is hard. And the world is judging your writing. You just want it to look and sound good. Short cuts can sound appealing when the work is hard and the pressure is on.

Let’s put it another way. Would I want my child’s teacher to use AI to write my child’s comments? Would I want to read that? The simple answer is no. Ezra Klein, the writer and host of the Ezra Klein Show podcast, has described it as a lack of friction. When he writes to a friend, a real human, there’s friction. He wants the person he is writing to to like him. To think he’s witty, or funny, or interesting. He is invested in what that person thinks of him. He’s tried to create bots that he can converse with and he said he usually ends up dropping the conversation because there’s no friction. There’s no person on the other end to be invested in. (Listen to a brilliant conversation about this here.) If my children’s comments were written by a bot, would I want to read them? What is real there? What is it actually telling me about my child? Something generic that could be said about any 4th or 6th grader? I know what the generic child of that age is like. I want to know what it’s been like to teach my child.

Or, perhaps, consider if your current employer wrote a letter of reference for you using AI. Would you want that letter? When this question has been posed to me and other teachers, the answer is a pretty quick no. I wonder what answer I would get if I asked a student who plagiarized using ChatGPT that same question. Would you be okay if I wrote your college recommendation letter using a bot? I’m not sure what their answer would be, and I’m afraid to ask. Perhaps all they care about is getting admitted, because they’ve been trained to place their entire sense of self worth in their college acceptances. Maybe the scenario I offer is a speech at their wedding in some imagined future. Would you be okay if your best friend got up to give a toast about you and they hadn’t written it themselves?

What am I doing here? If I used AI to do my writing, what is this job I’ve devoted my life to? If it isn’t about working with kids and teaching them to express themselves, what’s the point? I didn’t become a teacher to teach kids to sit in a room and prompt a Large Language Model to give them work that will be grammatically and technically perfect, but devoid of any real thought or experience.

But the time! The time! It saves so much time! You know what would also save me time writing comments? Not being a teacher. I would have 100% of my comment writing time back. I would have zero minutes of teaching another human to use a comma after starting a sentence with a subordinating conjunction. I would spend no time of my day explaining how sentence variety is like different parts of the song that keep your piece from feeling repetitive and mind-numbing. I could leave teaching! I have colleagues who are choosing to change careers.

There’s another angle that is maybe too far, but maybe just right. I don’t think I need to collaborate with the bots in my own obsolescence. By that, I mean that I don’t need to embrace technology that some are already arguing will eventually replace me. Remember when American jobs were getting “outsourced” and “off-shored” to low-paid workers in other countries, and they made the people getting fired train their replacements? That’s depressing. Do I have to go along with it, just because it’s here? Do I really need to “get with it” and “be cool” and embrace it? Kids are vaping a lot too, should we just give them a room where they can do it so they don’t hide in the bathrooms? Okay, maybe that’s a false equivalency.

Why am I here if kids are just going to have AI barf up some amalgamation of an Internet’s worth of words by real people, both paid and unpaid, who struggled through the writing process? Am I training highway robbers or thinkers? Am I training lip-syncers or composers? I have no interest in training copy-pasters. If there’s one thing that makes me seriously think about leaving the field, it’s AI. And I say that with a pang of absolute despair in my chest. Absolute despair. I love this job. I’ve worked so hard for the last 17 years of teaching and 2 years of graduate school before that to be good at this job.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but for now, I will be writing my own comments. What is more worthy of my time and effort, than to write a little note for parents about the child they love, that is aging and growing away from them with every passing day? What is more worthy of my time and effort, than leaving students with a final thought, a word of encouragement, a declaration of admiration and respect for the 180 days they have just spent with me?

Happy comment writing, y’all.

In our pre-service deeper learning work this year we delved into a few areas in our new statement of deeper learning at Graded. One of the items on the list is agency.

To kick off our discussions, we read this text, “Making sense of student agency in the early grades” by Margaret Vaughn from Kappan. Despite the title, it’s very applicable to all ages and grade levels. And I love an article that begins with a teaching anecdote. According to Vaughn, agency is “a student’s desire, ability, and power to determine their own course of action.”

Reading that text, I immediately thought about students in my middle school journalism elective. The way I operate it, it is much like a workshop where students are writing on their own topics at their own speeds. After our first assigned topics, there are no required or common topics, and I don’t set deadlines for students. Everyone writes at their own speed, ideally matching the writing and revision speed to the type of article and level and complexity they have chosen.

This freedom of choice and pace is amazing for some students and paralyzing for others. I started to think that the difference between the two reactions comes down to agency.

I’ll come back to the journalism course as a study in agency later, but today was our first day with students and there were so many moments that made me think about student agency. A first day of school is hard for anyone, but for new students, it demands a high level of agency. They have to listen closely to instructions, decide which peers to follow or reach out to, ask for help of adults they maybe have never met.

After a morning of advisory, grade level, and middle school assemblies, after lunch, students got to go to their first four, each for a short 30 minutes. Every student had 3 copies of their schedule given to them in the morning. The schedule lists the block (1-8), the course (humanities 7), the teacher (Mrs. Griswold), and the room number (D27). But it’s a schedule of a normal school day rotation.

Students had to use the printed schedule to find blocks 1, 2, 3, and 4 for our short afternoon classes today. They had to notice the teacher and the classroom printed there. Then they had to use our classroom numbering system or ask a peer or adult for help. This all requires a lot of agency.

Standing outside my room, the most common question I got was “Where is Mr. Lockhart’s room?” or a variation on that. My follow up was always, “What’s the room number?”

Very few students had noticed the room number or remembered it. Many claimed that room numbers were not listed on their schedule. I loved waiting patiently for them to show me that they were no room nu–oh, it’s right here. E07.

Sometimes a student came up knowing the room number. I was standing outside room D27. “Where’s D28?” I would point out that I was in D27 and D26 was to their left. Any guesses for D28? Being middle schoolers, they often forgot to say goodbye or thank you after the lightbulb went off and they scampered to class.

There was one student who stood out today. He came to my room during the start of block 2, when I had already started the class. I could tell he wasn’t a 7th grader. I asked if he had my class right now. He said yes. I asked to see his schedule. Block 2 said PE in the main field.

“Do you know where the main field is?”

“No.”

“We just had recess. Did you go to the field for recess?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, head back there.”

That seemed to click for him and he turned and left. Turns out he only made it to 2 of his 4 classes successfully. I think he switched block 4 and block 1.

Listen, he’s a new student on a big campus. I totally get it. But there wasn’t a lot of giddyup in his step as he left my room. He seemed a bit passive, unfluffed, adrift. I know his cognitive load was probably at the max, but I theorized that I was seeing a student who generally lacked agency. I’m curious to see if this pattern holds. He was one of almost 30 new students in the middle school, and the only one I saw or heard about having those difficulties. It wasn’t a common pattern for new students.

I think there’s something here in this first day experience about agency. Agency means using the tools in your hands, knowing when and how to seek help, planning ahead and setting your speed to compensate for lost time. These are important parts of driving your own ship. I know that the definition I gave of agency was about determining a course of action, but part of agency is weathering storms. Steering through rough weather.

If the first day of middle school isn’t the purest form of steering through rough weather, I don’t know what is.

(I started at a new school in a new country in 7th grade myself. Sheesh, I could tell some stories. More on that to come.)

My challenge for myself is to think about ways to teach students to be agents. How can we help them reflect and then try to exercise more agency? How can we be explicit when teaching them how to be agents? I bet some kids today thought I was being mysterious when I prodded them to find the room number on their printed schedule, or when I explained how the buildings were numbered–this is D, the next building is E; 1 digit number is 1st floor, 2 digit number is second floor–rather than just pointing and telling them.

I’m not being difficult. I’m showing you that you, like Dorothy, had the answers all along. The power was always yours.

Things are better, but not awesome. I don’t think awesome has really been on the table for the last 55 weeks, but it’s worth adding that caveat. Sometimes when you are struggling, people who wish you well want you to be great again so that they can not worry about you anymore. And sometimes those struggling get tired of carrying their own load plus someone’s else anxiety and worry, so we smile and say we’re fine! All cleared up!

It’s not “all cleared up,” but it is better. This Monday, Everett’s day care reopened. As a day care, they are classified as essential, even in the emergency phase we find ourselves in as a city with regular schools closed. On Monday morning, I sent this gif to my coworkers in our group chat with the message “Me walking away from dropping Everett off at day care this morning.”

For a moment I felt a bit bad. I don’t have tons of mom guilt, but sometimes I worry non-parents are going to be shocked.

So I followed that up with this gif and the caption, “To be fair, this was Everett running in the door without looking back.”

Monday was so much better. The two older kids did their work and due to leading less attention, I was able to focus on what I needed to do with less interruption.

Everett was sad before he went to school and said he’d miss us. I reassured him that we’d pick him up at the end of the day. He still repeats that feeling some mornings, but he comes home dirty from the sandbox and talking about what he did that day.

The other change I made that has improved my mental state was planning in more offline time in each of my 80 minute blocks. When we started the school year, I planned in 30-50 minutes of off-screen (asynchronous) work time for students. But as we went back to campus, I started running 80 minute live Zoom classes. It’s just exhausting for everyone involved, and I need to be free to help my children with their lessons and activities. Just being able to send my students off to work while I go get lunch started or help a kid with their writing assignment has done so much for me.

In case you needed reminding, I’m working two jobs and parenting at the same time. Matilda can’t read her math word problems or log herself into her computer. She needs help with instructions. She needs pencils sharpened and clean sheets of paper. She needs help finding her Portuguese book. They all need a time keeper to get them logged into their 4 Zoom classes a day. David and I have all these alarms set and we have to stop our teaching to tell the kids to join their Zoom classes when our phones start playing funny songs. And many times, we have to strong arm them into logging on because they resist.

They resist? I must admit that until March of this year, my kids have done 0 specials classes in distance learning. No PE, art, music, or counseling classes. And until this semester, they weren’t always consistent about going to their Portuguese classes every day. So, about half the time I tell them they have Portuguese or special, a cloud rolls over their eyebrows and they start negotiating skipping it. We’ve held the line and they always have a good time in those classes.

So I’m not in the low-bottom any more, in the words of Marc Maron. And that’s huge. I’m more focused, I’m less stressed, I’m less depressed.

We’re still waiting to find out if the state and city government will allow schools to reopen next week. Because we have parent/teacher conferences next week and only have classes on Monday and Friday, we bumped our tentative reopening to April 19, the following Monday.

The situation in Brazil and Sao Paulo is still really bad. You have to be really avoiding the news to not know that. There are a few signs of improvement in our state and city. Hospitalizations are down and we have some days of lower cases. It’s going to take some time for that to have an effect on the death rate and the ICU occupancy.

Teachers 47+ can get vaccinated starting on Monday. They haven’t announced when teachers under 47 will get vaccinated, but I’ve pre-registered and our school is hosting a vaccination site, so we may be able to get ours on home turf.

So, everything is “a little better, but…” That’s about as good as it gets in this pandemic, I guess.

But, hey, both my kids went outside to play with friends during our lunch break today and I’m writing this in a quiet, nearly empty apartment. I’ll take it where I can get it.

I’m back in distance learning this week after a week on campus. It’s been a rough couple days. The depression and anxiety–vague, amorphous–have crept back in. I just feel a general despair and frustration. To combat it, I want to tell you about a moment of joy yesterday.

Starting yesterday, Matilda is beginning 2 weeks of full-day, on-campus learning. Everett is beginning half-days on campus that will be indefinite. His half-day session rotates between mornings and afternoons each week. And without buses running, this means that David or I have to transport him to and from his day care and Graded. In the middle of the day. When we also have classes and duties.

Yesterday, I picked up Matilda and then we went and got Everett, then began to walk back across campus to where we were parked. We stopped at the library and Everett loaded his arms with every single dinosaur book he laid his eyes on, then demanded we sit on the couches and read. Matilda got two more books (to add to the two she checked out during the day when her class went to the library).

Walking up a ramp from the library, I was carrying my backpack, my swim bag, my tote bag with books and teaching stuff, Everett’s backpack, and the bag of library books. My shoulders hurt and I was panting.

But the chatter of the kids next to me was like hearing birdsong after emerging from a nuclear fallout bunker. Everett was talking about singing a dinosaur song, and Matilda was telling me about lunch and snack. As I write that, it doesn’t sound that remarkable. But my eyes started to fill up. They had a normal day. They were both energized and tired. They had things to tell me that I didn’t already know about. Matilda said, “Today I learned that the Earth goes around the sun. I didn’t know that!” Amazing. I was weeping. A day at school felt like a miracle.

I knew then that for me, the risks are worth it. Sending them to school, having Everett go to day care the other half of the days, all of it is worth it. To hear them chattering away about what activities they did, their specials, whatever, it’s worth it.

I felt a joy I’d forgotten I could feel. The joy of knowing that my kids are happy. I don’t always think consciously about carrying the weight of my kids’ pain. Honestly, it’s so painful to consider, so I think that I shield myself. Instead, I get mad about distance learning and students not turning in assignments. But that moment after a day at school made it clear to me that a huge part of the anxiety and depression of this time is how hard it is for our kids. How powerless we are to help them, to soothe them, to give them hope.

With kids as young as mine, we have had to soften all of the blows of the pandemic for them. We don’t tell them about death rates and ventilator shortages. We don’t mention variants. We don’t talk about the risk that their grandparents could die. Matilda is fascinated by birth and death, and so she’s often asking just the right questions. But even when she asks, I have ways to reassure her that I won’t die, her friends won’t die, even though I know that it’s not 100% certainty. I guess I’ve decided that I’ll apologize to her in the small chance that life proves me wrong.

Man, that’s some heavy shit. There’s a weight to all of this that we don’t let ourselves consider. The weight was somewhat lighter on Monday, and it made me realize what I’ve been carrying. Today it feels like I picked it all back up again.

I’m teaching from home today, so David will bring them home, and maybe that rush of chatter and flutter of papers from the backpacks will get me through the rest of the day.