The Coronacation Diaries, Episode 59

I Hope It Was Enough 

Photo by Aleksandr Ledogorov on Unsplash

The AP Lit exam was today. After 150+ school days of trying to lead seniors to a greater understanding of author's craft, of social and cultural literacy, and of thoughtful and concise writing --all whilst combating senioritis and that profound combination of anxiety and ennui that only seniors in high school can concoct-- today is the day when it is all tested.

Normally, the AP Lit exam is a 3-hour ordeal: 45-55 impossible multiple choice questions (where you choose the least wrong answer out of the four choices given); two literary analysis essays on obscure pieces of writing that you'd rarely choose to read on purpose; and finally a thematic essay in which you try to force a text from a list of books of literary merit to conform to a convoluted theme.

But this year, the test was just one essay, a Q2 (prose) analysis piece, done online. Around the world at exactly the same time (no matter whether you are New York City or Sydney), the questions were released and students had 45 minutes --just one chance-- to try to write a coherent essay on a piece they'd never seen before. This is also the year with a new 6-point rubric and new stable prompt wording that no longer suggested literary devices worth exploring. And, to the great surprise of every AP Lit teacher out there, there was not just one prompt release at 2 p.m. EST today, but many.

After the exam, I held a debrief Zoom for any of my students who wanted to talk. Surprisingly, eight of them came to the meeting, more than had come to a class since mid-March. And all eight students had received different prompts. There's no way to truly know how any of them did, at least not until I can track down all of the prompts and read them myself. And there's no joy in the memes this year. No great inside jokes. No international camraderie about the terrors of plants and the awfulness of Zenobia.

when the #aplit memes aren’t even funny bc we all got different passages pic.twitter.com/BIumQIeOpm

— isabel meade (@meade_isabel) May 13, 2020

I hope my kids did well. But it's terrifying, even more so this year than previous years, because so many of them hadn't engaged in any class activities in the last two months. The few that were reading and working and practicing all along: in them, I have complete confidence. With them, I've had so many 1-on-1 Zoom conferences and feedback discussions; I have seen them grow immensely in a very short period of time.

But the others? I have no idea.

2020 is truly a year of unknowns. It is a year of loss for all of us --but it is especially painful for our high school seniors. All of those rites of passage that they'd waited 12 years to earn...they didn't get those moments, frozen in time.

And it is a year of loss for their teachers, for those of us who didn't really get to finish our jobs with any feeling of success. We didn't get the closure with our seniors, that point of being so damn sick of them by their last day of school that we are ready to shoo them out the door. We didn't get the chance to make sure they were ready, that we'd taught them everything they needed to know (or were willing to listen to) before that door slammed behind them. We didn't get to see who they really were as human beings, once they quit giving a damn in those last few days and burned their bridges down.

We didn't get to hug them, tell them we were proud of them, and give them those silly awards. We didn't get to take that deep breath, knowing that we'd done out best and it was up to them now.

I hope the time we did spend with them was enough. I hope they still heard our truncated lessons and our words of advice.

I hope they still learned to write their way into their thesis. I hope they still learned that it's the journey seeking truth that truly matters.

I hope it was enough.