Taking the Never-Fail Road

When I was in school, I always got good marks. It was the custom in my high school that, after a test, the teacher would return our marked papers, and go over it, question by question, “so we could see where we went wrong.”

I always got an A, and I loved going over those tests. If I had 92% or 87%, I would pay close attention as the teacher went over the questions I got full marks on, and when it came to the questions where I had less than full marks, I would listen carefully to the explanation of what was needed in that answer, analyze my own answer to see what I had missed, and make notes on my paper. Even if I got 100%, I was willing to go over the paper, confirming that I had in fact done well, laughing at the teacher’s jokes, and thinking about her comments on where others had gone wrong on a particular item.

When I became an elementary school teacher myself, I saw the process from a different angle. I discovered that the very learners who needed it most were the ones who paid least attention. As I talked about the test, learners who had not passed talked to their neighbors, doodled on their papers, stared at the ceiling, or got up and went to the bathroom. Learners with C’s and D’s, who had a grasp of the subject, but had missed the finer points, continued to miss the finer points. They looked bored or uncomfortable; their body language told me that they were somewhere else, that they were not making mental notes that would improve their performance on the next test. Only the learners who had earned an “A” on their tests were paying attention, making notes, and eager to learn from their mistakes.

When I began to teach adult literacy, I knew my learners already had experience with failing to make the grade — most likely, they were the people who had got C’s, D’s and F’s in elementary school. That experience had made them sure they couldn’t write, had filled their heads with a dozen half-remembered rules they weren’t sure how to practice in their writing, and left them with a fear of putting pen to paper.

They needed a never-fail method for improving their writing.