Holiday Cheer: Should I Feel Good Or Guilty?

My Christmas gift came early this year. It isn’t a subscription to the Loeb Classical Library (although I would be very grateful for this). And it isn’t Amazon’s Alexa , or the new MacBook Pro. It’s an email.

Before I reveal the contents, I think it would be helpful to give some backstory. I have been blessed to be able to get to know many wonderful students over 30 years in education. Many have taught me things about how to be a better person and how to become someone who wants to create positive change in myself and in my community. Put simply, every year I get inspired by what these students say in person or Skype, write in emails and essays, and most importantly, do while still in secondary school or college.

They know education will help them achieve their goals and they are willing to work hard to reach high and far, even though they also know that they might not get exactly want they want. They do, however, believe that there is some truth to the clichés that the journey matters more than the final destination and that the experience of trying is itself transformative. But my mouthing these abstractions only makes their experiences sound trite. They aren’t. Many of the students I know are willing to travel across the world to seek out the opportunities that they might not have at home. They sacrifice comfort and a home culture in favor of a global education. Parents sacrifice not just huge sums of money but also the opportunity to see their children more than once or twice a year. 

But when it comes to international students more often than not the stories in the media are negative or focus solely on the money they bring to colleges and communities in the US. The negative press tends to focus on students from Asian given that the vast majority of students who come to the US are from that part of the world. The stories over the last several years about cheating on standardized tests and the use of of education agents who manufacture transcripts and essays has made to many in education suspicious or downright forthrightly judgmental of anyone coming from Asia, especially certain countries (China and Korea).

I have said this before, but it is worth repeating--the students I know and work with are some of the best I have ever met from anywhere. I have worked with honors students and merit scholar winners and know what good is in terms of students getting into top 10 colleges; many of the ones who I interact with belong in this group. I am not just talking about numbers, although many of them have nearly perfect grades on transcripts and top1% scores on standardized tests.  What stands out about many of the students is not the numbers, but the approach they have to living and learning. These students are hungry—they want to learn, want to explore. They are, in other words, the opposite what many think when it comes to students from Asia—test takers who lack imagination and character.

As a result, of some of these negative stereotypes and as a result of the limitations placed on the number of international students admitted to the most selective schools (most of the top 30 schools have about 10% of the student body from other places than the US),  the competition forspots is far greater than for most in the US. It should not be a surprise  that these students look for help in learning more about how to apply to schools outside of their countries. In many cases In their home country a single exam determines one’s fate when it comes to university placement. Writing essays, resumes, and doing interviews is  literally a foreign concept. That’s where people like me come in. Some of these students reach out to people who have experience in admission and who can help them understand what the process is that goes into ‘holistic’ evaluations. Most also need help understanding what a personal statement is since this is not something they have ever written before.

What I do with students is what some (me included) would call an intensive tutorial. Over a period of time I work with students on learning how to improve their writing, critical thinking  and pragmatic goal setting . Obviously, each student is different, but in most cases this involves a lot of discussion and a lot of rewrites. By the time a student hits submit on the Common Application (or other form) she usually has spent many hours writing a personal statement and other essays that many highly selective schools require. But here is where things get complicated at least from the perspective of how some perceive these tutorials.

For critics of people who help students to apply to highly selective  universities and colleges one of the biggest issues is that students who come from advantaged backgrounds have access to resources that others don’t.  This of course is true-- students whose parents have the money to help  their children navigate the complexities of applying to university in a different country and culture are at an advantage compared to those who do not have the resources. And in some ways these students are given an advantage over some US students who don’t have the resources to get help. (It is worth noting that some international students have no college counselors in their schools, so either they get help from outside professions or no help at all.) There is more focus on the vast differences between the haves and have nots in the US and around the world these days. I wish I could say things are going to get better, but I am not optimistic overall or in the world of education. On the other hand, I cannot see that students who request help should be held to higher standards or automatically rejected because they are perceived as having getting too much help. 

And this “too much” is what I think deserves a bit of ideological unpacking. At what point does help become too much help? Is any extra help, because all do not have access, too much? I would hope that most would not agree with this all or nothing definition. On the other hand, almost all would agree that completely creating or rewriting  essays and creating a fake resume for students is also not right. But what constitutes an acceptable middle? I won’t pretend to have the correct answer. All I can do is try to outline what I think works well for me and the students and then ask for feedback about whether I am wrong in my approach.

I know that I ask students to do a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. I also give a lot of feedback. Feedback is a nice way of saying criticism. I will praise things, but mostly what I am trying to do is challenge them. While to some students this might sound like living in a fairly low circle in Dante’s hell, most  students actually end up thinking it’s kind of fun (or at least not overly painful). No matter how they feel, however, when all's said and done, the students will be more prepared to do well in classes at university. This is ultimately my goal. I don’t care about which schools they go to as there are plenty of great places. I do care about helping them learn to question things including the way they see the world and communicate what they see to others. 

This interaction with students is what gets me up early and keeps me up late. I get to learn from students who have insights into topics and themselves that I would not have ever had been exposed to were we not connected. Does all this back and forth change the student’s voice? I certainly hope so. Does it make the voice more persuasive and effective? I certainly hope so. That is what a teacher is supposed to do. But is this too much help? Don’t all the schools advise students to use their own voice?  Is a 17 year supposed to trust in his or her own voice and not let others teach them about how we are all composed of voices in the plural and all of us can improve  our voices with practice and feedback? I am biased, of course, but to me this help only seems positive; to others, it is blatantly unfair. What do you think?

All of which brings me back to my Christmas gift. Here is what a student who was recently offered early admission to her dream school wrote upon hearing the good news (she gave me permission to quote her):

Good news! I received an offer from….(name withheld)!!! 😃😃😃

I  don't need to write any more  application supplements!👍👍👍

Thank you very much for your help during these three months!💪💪💪

I think these past three-months are really a valuable learning experience. I learned a lot about writing: I practiced how to write a good narrative in English, learned how to communicate my thoughts clearly in English, and become aware of how well I can write,  and thus became more confident about my writing.

Writing all these essays has been tough, but with you as a reliable guide, the tough task became interesting when I found the essays are gradually improved by better word choice and beautiful metaphors... I think much of my future learning will follow a similar pattern. This has been one of my best college-preparation courses.

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As a teacher, it would be hard to ask for any better feedback from a student. I am so grateful to her for sending this to me. I need, however, to describe what it was like to work with her. She has wonderful ideas about topics and things she has done that are creative, but  they were  hard to describe. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to turn an art project into words that would get across the colors and unique approach she took (I will post this essay at some point as a part of my essay test series). But as with her visual art she takes every word as seriously as her choice of colors and brushstrokes. She wants every word to count. When the November 1 Early Decision deadline approached, she’d completed 20+ drafts. I know very few students who would put this much effort into writing. Her willingness to do this already convinced me she will be a success, not just in school, but long after too. She takes pride in her work and is willing to do what it takes to get it the way she thinks it should be. We occasionally had discussions and even disagreements about word choice and idiomatic usage, but mostly we simply exchanged ideas about details and narrative approaches. The skills she developed came out of her effort and her willingness to take constructive criticism.

But now I  want  to return to my previous question. Does all our work together constitute too much help?  If so, why and when did it cross the line? I would argue that our work helped her discover her voice --the one that is better than the one she had before we worked together. Is this an unfair advantage and if schools knew that she had received this tutorial would or should they use the information against her and if so why?  I do hope the people who think what I do to help these wonderful students is ethically wrong will respond in concrete ways to help persuade me to mend my ways. But my real hope is that in describing the way some of us work with students will make educators more open to encouraging students to develop their talents and voices.  We have coaches for sports and that seems to be fine with most. Why does coaching writing for someone seem less ethical? Is what I have written self-serving? Yes. So be it.

For now I am going to enjoy my present and share in the happiness this student has for achieving a goal she worked so hard to achieve.