One can’t teach high school in Michigan and not spend at least some of their time worrying about the MEAP. Catering to it in my classroom certainly isn’t at the top of my priority list, but I do think that the skills necessary for the test are important. The composition portion of the test is a place where I especially like to let my focus fall. Meeting the requirements for this portion is something that can be worked into every writing assignment that students do.
     We did a practice MEAP on almost the first day of the new semester in my internship. The students were less than enthusiastic about it even after we talked about how much scholarship money there was to be had for a good score. They worked their way through it halfheartedly just to get it done and the results showed. When I had finished grading perhaps only a third of the students actually followed directions well enough to get a score. Of those students only one or two did well enough to get a three, none well enough to get a four.
     This was something that we addressed in the classroom right away. Writing is a thing that we have scheduled several times a week. Our students know their schedule and they know that when they come into class that day the first thing that they’re going to do is sit down and write.
     We have methods to cover a number of the problems that we saw in those first samples of writing. We have a very specific way that students are supposed to format their paper. They have to write their date in the international style, they have to put their title on the third line in the center, and the have to start writing on the fifth line, double spacing all the way. Writing the date international style angers them in words I can’t even express because it so different from the way that they have done things all of their life. However, they need to know how to do it. MLA guidelines want the date in that fashion and when they got to MLA a few weeks ago they were glad that they had some practice.
     The first time they wrote we asked them to produce ten lines. This was too much for some of the class, others had no trouble at all. The ones who hadn’t wrote enough didn’t like their first few holistic scores when they saw them, but within two weeks the majority of the class was writing as much as we were asking them to and at this point we began to bump the line requirement up. Every time it happened there would be a few people who would whine, but for the most part students kept producing. To date we’re up over twenty lines and it’s not unusual for students to ask for second and third sheets of paper because they have so much to say on the topic.
     The first two things that I have mentioned are important in getting the students to write, but this third thing is key. Topic is everything. The topic must relate to students. The topic must be something interesting. The topic must be something that students will want to talk about. There are always successes and failures in the generation of topics. By far the ones that go over the best for writing are the ones that make the students upset. Asking students what they know about grammar or what makes a story good will get you little response. Topics that mention violence and controversial issues in the classrooms will generate pages.
     One day I had a student come up to me after class and ask my why I always asked them to talk about things that made her so upset. I asked her how many pages she had written. The answer was four. I told her that should be answer enough for you.