A Hard Day

Today was one of my most challenging days to teach--and it wasn't because my lesson got throw off or the kids were unreceptive. My master teacher, who had been battling cancer for the last eight months or so lost his battle on Saturday.
It wasn't sudden, we knew the prognosis was grim and that his time was coming--but no one expected it to be this quick. In the end, the quickness was probably a blessing for him.
It doesn't erase the fact that it was a grim thing for the entire school to hear. Especially not when I found out twenty minutes before I had to face a room full of 30 of his former students.
I didn't want to write this as some sob story, because this man would not have wanted anyone to get that way. He was the single most positive person I have ever met. I want to write this because today's experience opened my eyes to all the reasons teaching is awesome that I might have been starting to forget. That is, what it really means to be a teacher.
I just had my students write when they first got into class. I didn't tell them what to write or even that it had to be about their feelings. I think we just all needed a moment. Of course most of them did write about it, and they asked me to read it as I came walking around.
Not a single one of them wrote about a book he taught them, or a writing strategy, or even a specific lesson. As these students were collecting and recording their memories, they were filled with experiences and stories they had heard from him. Times he let them just talk. Times he had talked about surfing, his funny stories about his wife. His weird clock that always chirps. The big I CAN painted on his classroom walls. These little pieces that were not English at all. They were just him. And the students loved him for it, grew because they felt they had someone to trust, and mourned today because they felt scared that they had lost that. At least, that's what they wrote. I was overwhelmed by how many students were less shaken from his death (again, we knew he was sick) and more by (as so many of their free writes said) the fact that they had never lost a teacher before, and what a strange feeling it was.
As I was leaving today, I noticed that they had put up a big piece of butcher paper on one of the walls, and that even at lunch time, students were swarming the paper to write anything. Memories, stories, or just "The best teacher ever." It was truly a sight to see.
I have my own memories and lessons to take away from my brief time with him. I am going to keep my chin up, and press on. I wanted to take a minute to share his story here, because I keep thinking of what Taco Fighter brought up in a recent blog post. "It is true that you teach your students yourself"
There was a man that did just that, and did it well.

Giving Better Directions

Today in my Junior English class we finished an important part of the novel, and we are now a third of the way through. A lot of important information has been presented, and in the book, the setting and mood will soon change dramatically. It is at parts of books like these that my students really seem to become lost and anxious. It is also during this part that I seem to have a really hard time helping them. To attempt to counteract this potential problem, I decided to take a lot of extra time today summarizing and checking for reading comprehension.
I looked up an activity on NCTE's readwritethink.org, that suggested having students title chapters themselves (they suggested that this particularly becomes effective when the book has chapters that have not been named already, which was perfect for our purposes since Catcher in the Rye is all numbered chapters). The titling of the chapters had to be based in the understanding a summation of major points within the text.
It started out well enough, I began by asking them titles of their favorite songs, movies, albums, books (ha), what have you. Then we broke down criteria that the creator of these things must have used to come up with their title. Once we had established some boundaries, I divided up the chapters and students so that each group was responsible for about two of them. With each title, I expected an explanation and a rationale.
The students got right to work, and didn't seem to have too much confusion with the task, but as I was walking around checking on progress, I found myself slightly disappointed by responses. I was getting a lot of responses like "Ch: Pencey Prep. Reason: In this chapter Holden discusses what it is like at his school Pencey for quite some time, including what the people are like and how he is going to be kicked out because of his poor grades"
Yes, that is what happens in that chapter. Yes, titling it that would then make a lot of sense. But it was just so...uninspired?
One group was more in line with what I had been thinking by calling a chapter "Goodbyes and the nasty bumpy old man chest" I thought this was a good way of introducing Holden's last exchange with Mr. Spencer, because that seemed to be what Holden was REALLY focusing on. Other groups just called this "Mr. Spencer" and went on to explain.
Both correct. One a lot more congruent with my expectation. Since this is a simple class assignment and I was more explicit with the summary anyway, this is what they will really be assessed on this time around. In the future however, I wonder, how I could give my directions in such a way that could better show this sort of extremely subtle expectation?

Notes towards the end.

-I went and saw Morrissey on Friday, which was an amazingly wonderful experience. It had been seven years since I had last seen him, and while that actually made me realize that I am slightly older than I think of myself as, it was also strange to think about it in terms of student teaching. The last time I saw Morrissey I was the age of my freshman. Weird.
-One of the students I had the best relationship with got kicked out of school. Just gone. Apparently this girl was quite the fighter, and crossed the line with that in a big way. I had no idea. She was one of my sweetest students that got along with everyone in the class. She would talk to me sometimes before class and after, just sort of tell me stories and vent to me about things. Nothing really that major. It just doesn't make any sense. It has reminded me that in a lot of ways, we really don't know our students, even if we think we do. We know their role as students, nothing more. I think this is good, don't get me wrong. I was just glad to be reminded. Although I do have to admit, I didn't think that the prospect of never seeing one of my students again would hit me this hard.
-All this stuff is coming to a close, and I simultaneously want it to slow down so that I have time to take it all in, and be over as soon as humanly possible. I know it will fly by whether I like it or not. I feel like just lately I've been hitting a really great stride in the classroom. This realization, and many others, has filled me with this great feeling of excitement and anticipation for becoming a "real teacher". I know it sounds cheesy, but I can not wait for the challenge and terror and awesome learning that is going to slam me in the face next year.

This really is a pretty meandering post, but it's what's on my mind at the moment.