This is the time of year when things get crazy in the school building. State testing, lots of kids out of class due to extracurricular activities, and lots of stress (in both students and their teachers) that sometimes leads to poor decisions. Our English department finished our testing yesterday and I have to admit that I feel as though a heavy weight has been lifted. We’ve (and by we, I mainly mean my kids) have worked diligently all year. They have risen to the occasion of every gauntlet I’ve thrown their way, and I could not be more proud.
The really cool thing about this time of year is that I can now teach what my friend, Tammy Kuhlengel, calls our “love units.” The things we are passionate about but have to place on the back burner until after testing because they don’t necessarily move our TEKS and curriculum forward. For me, it’s always a unit of some sort on To Kill a Mockingbird. I love the book, the movie, and all the nooks and crannies there are to discover within the cover of Harper Lee’s coming-of-age novel. I never tire of it; I’m such a fan that I even named one of our goats Harper Lee!
Last night, I was looking for a few documents I need to complete my grad school application. I came across one of my portfolios from one of my favorite undergrad education courses. It involved a complete development of a unit of instruction, including a novel study, media connections, articles, and concluded with a “Big Event.”
A “big event,” according to our professor, Dr. Susan Stewart, is the time in the unit when students take what they’ve learned and they collaborate on a project that assesses what they’re taking away with them. She taught us to “practice what we preach,” “make it meaningful,” and fully “immerse kids in the classroom.” We learned in that class to frame the text, in order to focus the students on what was to come. Next, we prepared them by giving them the first exposure to the text. Finally, you return with your students to the text and use collaboration for assessment.
The first page of our portfolio required us to give a personal background to the research we used for this assignment. I have to say that I sat on the floor last night and cried as I read over what I had written during that assignment. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve thought about it since I turned it in and yet, reading the words solidified that my goals and my ideals back then were evidently pretty transparent. It’s how I strive to conduct my classroom every day, even now, five years later.
Classroom Heroes: Cultivating Characterization AND Character
His name was Mr. Beeson. I’m sure he had a first name, but I’m equally as certain that not one of his Junior Honor English students knew what it was. He wore a tweed sport coat and a tie most every day that school year of 1984-85, yet hardly ever wore a smile. All business….no bull, that was his motto, and he stuck to it harder and tighter than white on rice. I can’t say that I remember a lot of what we did or read in class that year; I do, however, remember being humiliated more than once for volunteering a thought and being shot down because it didn’t qualify as a “right” answer…in his opinion. Junior year English was not a favorite, and my friends and I didn’t have much reason to anticipate the next year.
Except…Carol Harrell walked into Senior English, full of light and and life and laughter, and – despite the Dr. Suess-esque name – she revolutionized how we thought about, approached, and embraced literature. She was a real person, who not only loved to talk about all things literature but seemed to truly care about our thoughts as well. Her classroom became the spot we all couldn’t wait to reach each day. It didn’t take long under this umbrella of safety for us to blossom and, as we learned to express ourselves, we also began to grow as individuals. In short…we began to feel like heroes. Senior year will always hold a special corner of my heart. Even though it would take me some twenty-five years to reach the place where I was “ready,” the seed for teaching was planted way back in Carol Harrell’s vibrant classroom in Garland, Texas.
Creating classroom heroes.
Isn’t that what it’s all about?
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