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Donut class  – A group of students exhibiting strongly contrasting beliefs, inclinations, and behaviors.

Alternately stellar and stupid, inspiring and insipid, donut classes leave nothing in the middle. Students sit upright clutching .7mm mechanical pencils or slouch empty-handed. Some students redirect peers for the sake of a lesson (“Be quiet, my friend is talking”) and others directly undermine the learning (“Shut up. This assignment sucks ass”).

Teachers contribute to the “empty middle” by backing some students with letters of recommendation to universities, burdening others with referrals to the main office, and writing nothing about the rest. Students do not complain when this happens, as this is par for the course, the way things are, the way they will be. Students verbalize labels implied by teachers’ selective writing campaigns (“Einstein,” they call one peer. “Stupid,” they call another), pushing those in the middle ground to the bloated perimeter, thereby reducing instances of degree or gradation.

Documented existence of individual donut classes (4th or 5th periods, for example) is rare. Some researchers attribute this lack of proof to teacher bias; having “nothing in the middle” reflects the lens with which a teacher views a class more than the reality of the class itself, they say. Others assert school infrastructures and community demographics divide students. To wit: If a lone school on a crumbling hill serves the gated communities on the hill and the subsidized apartments below it, and if counselors and registrars at the school enroll “regular” students in remedial reading or Advanced Placement, Honors, and International Baccalaureate classes, the entire school may be split. Teachers need not worry about divided classes or fret about the rarity of a “filled center,” for forces outside the teachers’ control have already segregated students by section, hall, wing, or floor.

A circular image for a linear concept, “donut class” is a term with limited productivity.

See also: mayonnaise sandwich, crab bucket

(Derek Smith)

A manila envelope in my box: course evaluations. I opened it and thumbed through the pages, noticing (and skipping) those which stayed inside predictable boxes: the perfect column of “exceeds expectations,” the zig-zag alternation between 3’s and 4’s intended to suggest real thought, and of course the completely blank. Two evaluations caught my eye, however. Both had single sentences below the same question: Does the instructor exhibit enthusiasm for his subject?

One response—looped cursive, probably a Bic: He is always super excited about poetry and the way he joked, wandered around, and even cried helped me learn.

The second—block capitals, probably a green Pilot V5: I found it hard to pay attention and stay awake sometimes because he didn’t really have much energy or excitement.

I slid the evaluations back into the envelope and returned the envelope to my box. Walking to my car, I wondered if I ought to cry, or think of a joke, but I had trouble paying attention to what the evaluations said. New snow was slanting from the sky and tumbling across my windshield, flake by flake, and it reminded me of the beach sand I used to blow from between the spread pages of my textbooks in college.

(David Jacobsen)

Schoolin’ the Sixties (Derek Smith)

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Not much. The first thing I usually do is take off my shoes. Nothing feels quite so good at the end of the day as rubbing my bare feet on the carpet below my desk.

I always daydream. Sometimes I imagine my students and I are on top of a green mountain Sound of Music style, band of happy singers flinging candy-stripe suitcases and brown satchels with leather straps every which way. Look at me! Singing in the abbey garden without permission. I am governess, surrogate parent.

Maybe I am a wilderness instructor leading my charges across a precipitous mountain ridge. The choreography is a single file lock-step march toward a craggy peak on the horizon. Bags are heavy with allergy pills, shin guards, blue plastic retainer cases, spiral notebooks, seashell headphones, waterproof volumizing mascara, Jergen’s ultra-healing lotion, and extra boxes of World’s Finest Chocolate.

We weaken as we near Mount Doom, the heart of the black land. I trust by the time we get there we will know why we’re here, and what we’re throwing in the fiery pit. My team has questions too. Where are we going? they want to know. Who chose this path? When will the bus pick us up? What happens when the sky goes dark? What’s with all the up and down?

“It’s a mountain, Chris.”

“The mountain we need to piss on?”

I hear their justified and unjustified opinions. I hear bits of gossip with names: Brian has a strobe light. In his shower! Mr. Brubaker is the coolest. I ask Cassie if this counts for the spelling walk she wanted to do, and she says no. I wonder if there will be a castle somewhere along the way and if we will get food and water. Pilar says she needs to clean her ear piercing. I invent a castle. “We’ll be at the castle soon,” I say. “You can use the bathroom there.”

“But I don’t have a dungeon pass,” she says.

“Then you’ll have to ask the guard.”

She stomps a snowy foot. A rock on the ledge tumbles and hits other rocks, cascading. She fiddles with a turquoise bead on her ear and swings her pink backpack to the side and gets out a box of powdered donut holes and a gray pepperoni stick.

“Who do you have after this?” she asks Mae.

“I’m not sure,” Mae says, taking a donut. “Mrs. Riley?”

I’m not their only leader. The students go on trips where they get similarly lectured and advised, marked up and graded down. Points are important, one leader tells them. Points are not important, another says. This assignment is worth fifty-five points, literature explores great ideas, science is not a mystery, you are the future, study the past. In math, call it “data”; in science, call it “evidence”; in English, “concrete detail.” This meets expectations, this exceeds expectations, this does not meet expectations as outlined in the rubric. As if normal human beings would say such things to each other on a journey of great importance.

We keep marching.

Sometimes I imagine we get to the castle and my students find a spiral staircase. I disappear because I know if I don’t add steps at the rate they climb, they’ll get to the top and find me there with a handheld trowel, a half-empty bag of powder cement, and some melting snow. I just added these last few, I’ll say, pointing to crumbling stairs that drop off in the sky.

I type a rough outline for tomorrow’s lesson:

  • Continue work on the Fahrenheit 451 theme essay.
  • Revise thesis statements to be more clear and specific. Share out.
  • Select three quotations from different parts of the book.

(Derek Smith)

If school is like a race, I wonder, what kind? Suburban marathon? Wilderness journey through the North Cascades? The Amazing Race? I imagine students in desks scooting over the tile floors across my classroom, swatting each other with rulers, vying for prizes from Prentice-Hall, the sponsor of the games.

I imagine too, of course, everyone outdoors and climbing a mountain. The first few schools to the summit split the prize money. At the sound of the gun, the teachers grab students’ wrists and run. If combining a “Race to the Top” competition with a “Leave No Child Behind” mentality means a few students get dragged through the dirt, so be it. Tomorrow’s newspapers will publish the results anyway.

In the Bible, God requests a sacrifice and Abraham goes to the top of a mountain. Here and now, government official request sacrifices and teachers make them on the way up.

(Derek Smith)

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