1. Summarize someone’s opinion of something you read or watched.

2. Respond to it with your opinion of what you read or watched.

For whatever reason — and I’m sure it’s due to my inability to explain things in a way that makes sense — this idea is breaking their world.

Then sometimes, because I try to be nice and helpful and extend the benefit of the doubt, I get drawn into really, really stupid power plays, like when one student usurps ten minutes of class seeming like he’s trying to understand how a hook, summary, and thesis all go in the introduction. When I finally caught him smiling as I tried to explain for the fifth time that the HOOK, the SUMMARY, and a THESIS STATEMENT ARE ALL COMPONENETS OF AN INTRODUCTION, I got pretty mad (inwardly) and told him to get to work on it and we’d see how it goes.

Another student simply refused to try, so I had to coach him: “Well, what does the author say here? Okay, then, what do you think about what he said?” Once we had that figured out, I said, “Write it down.” He said, “I’ve already forgotten.” I actually picked up his pencil and handed it to him, and we went through it again.

The complicating factor is that my students have such a broad range of skills — from fifth-grade drop-outs who somehow wrangled GEDs to experienced, albeit drop-out college students. One student put his head down, did the entire lesson and wrote his paper during the two-hour class; another got maybe five sentences.

It is so incredibly frustrating some days. I love teaching — I love teaching at the pen more than anywhere else I’ve taught. I want my students to learn this stuff, to challenge themselves, and to write successfully and think critically. But I’m not sure they are.