Stifling the "Gotcha" Monster

Wile E. Coyote and I have a lot in common.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I used to hope that the Roadrunner would finally be caught by his lovable arch-rival. As a child, I sat glued to the set each Saturday morning yearning for the moment when my Warner Brothers anti-hero would finally find the perfect Acme device to give that smug little bird what he deserved. 

When I grew up and became a teacher, I took a little bit of Wile E. Coyote with me. 

Maybe I have a heightened sense of justice. I want hard work to be rewarded. I’m devastated when I hear the news that people took shortcuts that paid off and that hardworking people didn’t win. When watching Law and Order: SVU, I’m outraged when Olivia Benson and her crime-fighting partner du jour don’t catch the perp or when the clearly-guilty bad guy is found innocent due to some glitch in the legal system. 

In the classroom, this crusade for justice manifests itself in the “gotcha.” Like the coyote, I have toiled relentlessly to reward only the students who completed their homework, who read the assigned passage, who studied for the test, and who showed up to my class prepared. I’ve even set tricky traps for them: diabolically difficult quiz questions, endless hoops to jump through, and crafty assessments. Justice, after all, must be served, right?

Here’s just one of many examples from my own life. Back in a previous decade, we made all the freshmen in English read my favorite novel, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Some of you reading this, no doubt, shudder at the thought of that experience, which is challenging even to the most stalwart readers. The vocabulary is tough, the sentences unwieldy, and the plot labyrinthine, involving an enormous cast of characters. I knew that students were flocking to the Cliff’s Notes in droves, and I was convinced that many students weren’t really reading the book, updating their character list, recording unfamiliar vocabulary words (with definitions, the sentence Dickens wrote, and a sentence of their own) in their notebooks, and writing summaries of the book’s 59 chapters. To keep my students accountable, I crafted daily reading-check quizzes. 

By the time we got to Chapter 29, my coyote-esque behaviors had spiraled out of control. On the reading quiz for that chapter, I included a question asking the name of the servant Pip hires to work for him in London. The character, Pepper, is only mentioned by name once, and he is referred to maybe three times in total in the novel. He was not, however, mentioned in the Cliff’s Notes, so that made him a perfect candidate for a “gotcha” question on the quiz. 

The result: Most of my students got the question wrong, vindication for my theory that they weren’t reading the book carefully. I had separated the readers from the not-readers!

The other results were more damaging than a simple ten points off on a daily grade. Conscientious students flipped into panic mode and began reading and rereading, focusing on minute details instead of seeing the big picture and enjoying the plot. Students who were struggling to read but were giving it their best effort gave up hope because their work was not being rewarded. And some otherwise-honest students resorted to full-fledged cheating to get the answers from classmates because they saw no other path to success. Cutting corners became a necessary survival strategy for many.


I had unwittingly delivered the message that the most important goal in reading a novel was to memorize every tiny facet. I had reduced the reading experience to a trivia game. And many students became disheartened, discouraged, and resentful. 

Through the years, the “gotcha” monster showed up in many contexts. In reader’s workshop in my English class, I lost sight of the goal--to foster a lifelong love of reading in my students--because I was too worried about catching the hooligans who were trying to trick me into thinking they were reading their self-selected books each day. I wasn’t going to be that clueless teacher who let them gloat about pulling one over on me. Consequently, what should have been a joyful exploration of literacy became a drudgery for them and a source of stress for me. Buried beneath mounds of reading logs, journal entries, and vocabulary lists, my students and I turned reading into a torture.


Instead of being Wile E. Coyote, perhaps I should have tried to be like Tom Sawyer with his famous whitewashed fence, kicking back and enjoying myself while convincing my students to do the tough work I wanted them to do. Surely I should’ve taken some consolation that many of my students finally found the fun in reading rather than punishing them by setting up roadblocks and traps.


I wish I could tell you that I banished the “gotcha” monster completely. If I told you that, I’m sure my students would resoundingly disagree. I think a challenge is important, and I want my class to be rigorous. But I keep coming back to this idea: Rigor doesn’t mean more work.  

Middle school and high school are not college. Students are learning how to learn. They are challenging themselves and being challenged. They are growing as learners and thinkers as their brains continue to develop. While I should reward their efforts and applaud their progress, I’ve realized that I need to question whether my assignments and assessments intentionally or inadvertently stand in the way of their growth and discourage them from going further.


I’m particularly mindful of this in the world of honors and AP classes. Though these classes are designed to make students college-ready and, in the case of AP, actually to expose them to college-level work, I have to remember that I’m still teaching teenagers. Each trap I set may deter a student from attempting the challenge of my class.


That’s the thing I love about AVID. As we open our classroom doors to introduce more students to rigorous coursework and encourage them to challenge themselves, we retain the mindset that it’s important to scaffold the learning. We provide the necessary support and encouragement to help them succeed, and as they develop the skills, we gradually remove the scaffolding. The AVID strategies provide multiple pathways for students to experience their learning through writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. Using these strategies and developing a growth mindset along with my students turns me into a cheerleader for their learning rather than a nemesis.


Instead of expending energy on catching every student misstep like some diabolical game of educational Whac-a-Mole, I’ve tried to focus on providing the best experience for the majority of the students. Making my classroom a safe and fun place to learn has become a top priority. I constantly have to check myself to make sure my inner coyote hasn’t taken over.


Having 28 students reading, writing, thinking, and enjoying themselves while doing it seems much more important than catching the two who aren’t. And maybe the experience will become so contagious that the less engaged students will pick up a brush and start whitewashing the fence along with the rest of us.