I have not yet written all the posts about Bali (hell, I haven’t even posted a post about carving), but this struck me and I wanted to get it down.
I got a 78 on a creative writing assignment in third grade. All of the grammar, spelling, and punctuation were correct (to the best of my memory). So, I don’t understand how I got a 78. The assignment was to write a piece from the point of view of the boy who cried wolf.
My question is this: How does a third grade teacher grade an assignment like that? I am certainly willing to admit that my piece was a bit superficial, but that seems like a flaw in the assignment. After all, the boy is a bit of a minor character in the story. It is really a story about group mentality, and it is inherently problematic. To quote House: “No matter how many times a boy cries that he is being eaten by a wolf, his mother will come running.” And, if he is crying that the sheep are being eaten, the shepherd will always come running.
So I am supposed to write a piece from the point of view of a character who is a one-dimensional creature created to teach kids that if they continually ask for attention their friends and family will stop caring? What is expected from this assignment? Granted, a good writer can really sink his or her teeth into a one-dimensional character and flesh that character out, but at nine years old, with a grasp of realistic character development that barely extended beyond knowing why I did the things I did, let alone what motivated other people’s behaviors, what would garner an A?
Perhaps it was my use of an answering machine in my discussion of the wolf calling and the boy trying to screen his call. After all, shepherds did not have phones. But I thought I was being incredibly clever saying that “A wolf came to call. I tried to screen his call, but he somehow got through.” In my nine-year-old head, that was tantamount to Faulkner (or, at least Hemingway). I was using metaphors and shit.
What does a third grade teacher expect from an assignment like that?
Readability? Sure. I’m positive that I got marked off for neatness, but I was pretty good at spelling and grammar, and my penchant for run-on sentences didn’t show up until later.
An engaging story? I would say not necessarily. It would help, but I don’t know that that would be a fair thing to put on the rubric.
Thought? Yes, a story in third grade should have some thought put into it, the student should have considered before writing and not just vomited words on paper (another trait in my school writing that would show up later).
Realism? It’s supposed to be creative. Why squash imaginations?
To some extent, though, no matter how boring a story, as long as it meets the length, neatness, spelling, and grammar requirements, I don’t see how a third grade teacher can give it a grade below an 85. Objectively, I don’t think that interest should be able to pull a nine-year-old’s grade below a B, everything else being fine.
And that is one reason that I do not teach third grade, because I can absolutely see myself grading down for boring “creative” pieces, in an effort to spur imagination. But, how can you know when someone is being unimaginative and lazy versus someone who has a limited imagination?
And, really to the point of this post, how did Mrs. Reed know how disdainful I was of this assignment when I was pulling out all of the literary flourishes that my little mind knew to hide that fact?
(Because third graders are not nearly as clever as they think they are. Another reason I wouldn’t teach third grade.)