I had not always considered English to be my favorite subject, but after walking into room 105 and experiencing my first class with Mrs. Birkemeier, everything changed.
Throughout the year, not only did English become my favorite subject, but Mrs. Birkemeier became one of my favorite teachers.
After a year in the classroom, I became accustomed to the way she teaches and grades. As several students who have her currently or have had her in the past may know, she’s well known for her short and simple responses to student writing.
Her infamous “ok”s are widely known across the student body. Although it may be confusing and possibly even hurtful to students reviewing feedback on their papers, Mrs. Birkemeier has valid reasoning.
Over the years, her class sizes have increased, leaving her with less and less time to grade each individual paper. She recognizes that feedback is very important to students, so she always wants to leave a response for students to ensure that they feel their work has been recognized rather than ignored.
During times when the assignment would be a larger research project, Mrs. Birkemeier would not have time to thoroughly read and respond to each individual draft and final product.
When she first started teaching, she would respond to each student’s work with recommendations and compliments, but she found two things to be true. One, it was very time-consuming and detrimental to her life outside of teaching, and two, some of her students did not even read all of her comments.
So, over time, she developed shorter and shorter responses. However, she would never let it get to the point where there were zero comments on a piece because that’s what she experienced in college.
She knows that it’s detrimental to students’ learning if there are no responses, so by simply acknowledging the writing, she opens the door for students to seek more in-depth feedback if that’s what they are looking for.
Of course, she is aware of how modern-day texts are perceived. Although most of the time connotated with negative thoughts, Mrs. Birkemeier’s “ok”s and “fine”s imply future success on tests. “Kids think fine is bad, but fine is good … on a timed AP exam, fine is going to get you the score you need.”
She brings up the fact that a stupendous piece of writing takes several rough drafts and tons of time to get the final outcome one might be looking for, but on an
exam that could earn you college credit, a stupendous essay is not realistic.
In the case that a work submitted is stupendous, Mrs. Birkemeier will add an exclamation mark onto her “ok”. She states, “If it’s exceptional, like ‘wow, that is really clever and I had not thought about that’, then I might add an exclamation mark.”
While she acknowledges this and gears a lot of her teaching towards producing compositions that will earn the most points on the AP exam, she also acknowledges that in one’s future, there’s a high probability that there will need to be a ton of effort put forward into a certain piece of work, such as a college essay or wedding vows.
This being said, she tries to split her teaching between producing short but “fine” essays and producing time-consuming but compelling and inspiring essays.
