MSU’s teacher prep program sometimes assigns some pretty wonky work. I liked this one, so I’ll share my thoughts.
The assignment was to describe our ideal classroom. The layout, the atmosphere, the students, our role… everything. The idea is that the more we get together closer we are to our ideal, the happier we’ll be. So, go on, read, and think of your educational utopia.
Standing just outside my door, I watch as students bustle to and from lockers and hurry to get to their next class. Twenty-five bright-eyed students file past me, each greeted with a word or two and a smile. As the warning bell rings, one student lingers to ask a question about an upcoming paper. I note that the class will be reviewing the expectations today, and the child walks to his seat.
As I enter the classroom, most of the students are in their seats writing, while one student—who was absent yesterday—checks her folder for assignments, and then comes to me for further instruction. As we quietly review the missed work, the remaining students continue writing about a prompt (What evidence of harassment do you see in our community? Our nation? Our world?) displayed on the SmartBoard. The student soon returns to her seat as I quietly take attendance—everyone is present.
After several minutes, I call the class, still silently writing, to attention, asking for volunteers to share what they had written. Eager hands shoot up, and upon hearing their names, students share with the class the connections made with personal life, recent events, and our current literature.
With the brief warm-up over, I move the class into a little bit of housekeeping. Questions posed throughout the day—ranging from content to requirements and expectations on assignments—are brought in front of the class; they answer most of them without my help.
I give one quick direction, and the students start sliding their desks out of rows—both quickly and quietly—and into a large circle. The students on the edges of the room simply face the center and slide toward the outside, while the students in the middle fill in the gaps. In less than thirty seconds everyone is facing one another and ready for conversation.
Walls filled with student work, over-stuffed bookshelves topped with verdurous plants, the glowing SmartBoard, and I all look in on the circle of students. I click the slide ahead, and the display reveals five prompts to aid the students in their discussion of Elie Wiesel’s Night. Ranging from simple comprehension, to personal responsibility for actions, the questions touch on a wide variety of subjects. The conversation does the same.
As students speak, they start with recall of the story. As the talk continues, events from Wiesel’s account bring up strong beliefs; the students respond accordingly. As the class speaks with one another, candidly, civilly, and politely, I am silent. Sitting outside of their circle, I merely listen, letting the students form their own ideas and opinions on the text. After all, as the poster in the back of my room reads, “The object of teaching a child is to enable the child to get along without the teacher.” It is their class; I am merely a facilitator and a manager. I guide the students to the learning, but their ideas and beliefs are the tools used to build knowledge.
Night and many of the other texts the class reads in English Nine practically teach themselves. They are moving, sometimes shocking, and relevant. They open thought and discussion to the world the students inhabit—not just a fantasy world found in the pages of a dusty hardcover. The texts bring to light ideas of responsibility, morality, injustice, and equality. The students perceive this, and take the learning into their own hands. This is the true beauty of teaching English.
As the conversation begins to dwindle, I interrupt the discussion. I instruct the students to shift back into their rows—always amazed at how seamlessly they transition—and bring up the next lesson on the screen.
As I start introducing the next element of literature (setting, this time) the students pull out sheets and begin filling in relevant information. As with characterization and plot, the definition is covered, and then I move into examples. The class gives me several from the stories we have read, and I ask them what setting can add to a text.
The elements of literature, as well as vocabulary and grammar must be taught. The trick is to show the students the importance and the relevance. Throughout the year, as the students begin to see how these facets relate to both the texts we read and their world, I begin to propose other items as texts. Billboards, commercials, memos, speeches—how do the elements of literature apply to them, and what happens when we change one? How does that affect the meaning of the text?
I groom my students to be tolerant, morally upstanding, curious, and responsible. They are growing up in a world full of intolerance, war, advertising, and technology. It is my job, as an English educator, to use texts and conversations as a tool to guide these students to make their own decisions, and to form their own well-informed beliefs.
