My Students

Yes, I call them MY students because even though I've only spent a few days in their classroom, I already feel as though I'm getting to know them. For example: Russel, a "C-level" student, loves anything to do with hunting, and very little else holds his interest. We're reading Tuesdays with Morrie in that class, and Russel is having a hard time seeing how reading this relates to his life. On Wednesday I assigned a Glogster project in which students had to display the best lesson they've ever learned ( this relates to Mitch learning his lessons from Morrie). Russel, of course, didn't see the point in this either until he realized that he could talk about the best hunting lesson he's ever learned. For students like Russel (and there are a few), broader assessment options has been a key element in getting to know them.

I'm also shocked, across the board, and how much these students open up with their writing. I know in our teaching writing classes we're all pretty comfortable with sharing our work...but come on, we're college kids. ENGLISH MAJOR COLLEGE KIDS. And we're teachers. So we're supposed to a) share our work and b) love to talk about. These students, however, are 11th graders; I would never expect them to be so comfortable with sharing their writing. It's not just the fact that they write and read it; it's WHAT they're writing. In every class I've had at least one student that blew me away with how much of their personal life they are sharing with the class through writing. One of the prompts posed was, "write about your biggest fear". I had an honors student write an elaborate poem -- mind you, the students had a 2 minute timer -- and after she read it the class gave her a huge round of applause. We were all blown away!

We all talk about how our teaching English class is sort of a community, and it's amazing for me to see how my co-op teacher has created that sense of community within each of his classes. All of the students talk to each other. All of the students feel comfortable to share something as personal as their writing. This is something I'm striving for, and this is something I'm determined to have in my own classroom.