Broken essays

A couple of weeks ago I was leading up to students writing an essay on a story's theme based on Gary Soto's memoir one last time. The end result of all this work would have them write their own memoir where they would have to pick a them for their own life.

We were in the process of analyzing Soto's memoir, breaking down the plot line discussing possible themes and providing evidence that back up what they were saying. 

I was asking a lot of them. Each day I would reveal a new assignment that would cause them to go deeper into Soto's memoir. For the most part students were going along with the plan. But there was this small group of students that we're starting to grumble.

Their grumbling would intensify each day as a new challenging assignment was given. Until one day a student's head was slowly lowered and stayed there the entire class period. A complete system shut down occurred with this student. I observed from afar until it came time to see if I could intervene in any way. Turns out I couldn't. The class ended and this student went on the merry little way.

The next day I investigated as to why this student completely shut their door on me. You want to know why they decided to lay their head on the desk? I was giving them too much work to complete. I like to call this scenario 'earning my paycheck' I love when students ask why I make things so challenging.  That's part of the job description to challenge their brains.