sufficient

why I teach

The first day back after Spring Break is usually pretty rough. Mine started off so- my body was still on Central Time after my friend Sarah's wedding this weekend in Memphis when my alarm went off at 5:30 and then there were the copy machine issues. But then my students came and I was reminded why I teach. We're still reading poetry and my love for it grows daily! Knowing today would be a rough day for me, I scheduled student presentations for the first few days back. Their assignment was to find a poem they liked, any poem, read it to the class, and then spend about 5 minutes teaching it and leading a short discussion. Granted, for the most part the "teaching" part may not have gone so well, but the discussions they led re-cemented my vision for my place as a teacher.

It started second period with a student informing the rest of us that once cemented, you can change anyone's views on anything, specifically race. In a moment of strong emotion I told him that if that were true, then I needed to quit my job immediately. Oh, I hope he understood what I meant. Next class, someone had chosen Amazing Grace, which turned in to a student-led discussion of what grace is and how it had changed John Newton from a slave trader into an evangelical. This afternoon, after a poem discussing the nature of truth, a student shared a poem entitled My Cross which talked about the whole Romans 7, two natures at war within us thing and began his presentation saying, "I am a Christian and this poem reflects the struggle I have everyday over what the right thing to do is." I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream, "I'm there!! I feel you! I understand!" He asked the class if they had similar struggles with anything and a girl raised her hand and told the class that she knew she should love reading the Bible as a Christian, but it was hard and she doesn't like to do it. Numerous students nodded heads in agreement. And this is in my PUBLIC SCHOOL classroom. I just sat back and let it happen. And I applaud the bravery of the student who shared his faith so openly with his peers.

Every student who shared a poem explained that they had picked the poem because its meaning related to their life in some way, reflected their thoughts and feelings. I wanted to jump and down for joy!! I don't think they know that now they understand what "theme" is, that underlying universal idea in a work, nor do they know that I have accomplished my goal for this poetry unit: Each student found one poem that they liked, was able to glean meaning from it, and saw that it really does reflect real life.

So even though I told them that we would be going full force for the last 35 days of school, in reality, they have acheived what the goals I had in mind for them.

posted by CP @ 9:58 PM 1 thoughts