A Discovery

I was cleaning out some old files and came across an essay I wrote several years ago in graduate school. It was for an assignment that called for us to look ahead five years into the future and predict where we'd be as teachers.

My response is below. I decided to put my new thoughts in parenthesis. I thought it would be interesting to see what I have accomplished and what I've fallen short of. I also thought it would be interesting to see if I still believed what I did four years ago. It would also be interesting to take a look at how my writing has changed too.

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"Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"

Often times when I was a first year teacher, I could hardly see ahead to Friday let alone five years into the future. (Well, right off the bat I see that some things haven't changed). But time has a strange way of creeping up on you. When I was in high school, I never thought I would make it to college. Why do you think you're so smart that you can make it through college? Then time crept up on me and I never thought I would ever be a teacher, even though that was what I always wanted to be. What is so special about you that you think you can teach others? Then time crept up on me again and before I knew it, I was trying to student teach. What makes you so sure you can survive a classroom under the inspection of a real teacher? Sure enough time continued to crawl along and it came to the point where I was to get a full time job as a teacher. What makes you so sure you can handle your own classroom? Then three years passed and I found myself pondering grad school. Again that damn pestering voice began again. What makes you think you're smart enough to handle grad school? Now that I am about half way done with my graduate school experience, I am preparing for that little voice to sound again. But this time for once in my life, I feel ready for that little son of a bitch.

For once I can see past the end of the week. I can see way past it in fact. I like this new perspective. Somehow grad school has corrected my vision or at least given me a new perspective, whichever metaphor you prefer. Graduate school has also provided me with something else just as vital, renewal. (I agree. I wouldn't be teaching if I hadn't returned to graduate school).

I knew I had to leave teaching when I began to stop seeing students as the same individuals I did my first two and a half years. Suddenly, teaching was becoming an awful lot like work. I remember the day I up and decided I had to get out. I was sitting in the staff room during lunch. A freshman math teacher was sharing an email she had received. It was entitled "Things You Wish You Could Tell Parents About Their Kids." I chuckled at a few, "Your son has hit rock bottom and has begun to dig," and "Your kid is depriving some village somewhere of its idiot," were two that come immediately to mind. That I thought these were amusing is frightening enough. But what really caused me to question my purpose was when I caught myself actually placing students' faces to the insults. I knew I had become jaded and needed to get out and back to the "other side" of the classroom. (I still have my jaded moments. But I really enjoy my time teaching more than I used to. I get more out of my classes. And I know my students get more out of my classes than they ever did before).

Four months later I feel reborn. I have a renewed purpose and focus. I can look back and see that while I had some success, I was shooting in the dark. Now I have some methods and theories to back up my ideas. Upon much reflection and examination, I can now see the whys behind the hows. (I'm still trying to see the whys behind the hows. I still too often find myself just doing something because it sounds fun or interesting, not because it's necessary effective or proven).

So I will attempt to take a peak ahead five years into the future of my career.

In five years I will be the head of a high school English department. I will teach the Advance Placement classes and composition. If there isn't an Advance Placement program, I will create one. I will also teach at least one freshman or sophomore class for at least one semester. I want to do this as a form of renewal. Unlike my former high school, I will strive to alternate classes among the teachers. I want to guard against Mrs. So and So always getting to teach "Brit Lit" and Mrs. So and So always teaching "Speech" and the poor, unsuspecting, but happy to be employed, first year teacher always teaching "Comm 9 and 10." I hope this will cause me to stay current in the field. (Okay. I missed the boat here. First, I'm certainly not the head of this department. After going through our curriculum review and implementation cycle, I'm not sure I would ever want to be either. Second, The AP classes are untouchable. But I can live with that. I do teach something better though - College Composition - though I did have it fall into my lap and I didn't really do anything to earn it. Still, I wouldn't trade that class for anything. Third, I have quite a variety of classes. I like this. I haven't taught Comm 10 in a long time, but I still teach sophomores in Composition I. I teach juniors in seniors in my other classes. I have elite classes - College Comp and Brit Lit. I have other very general, low level classes - Composition II and American Lit.)

In my classes I will strive to rid myself of the stringent top down approach to teaching. In a personal and familiar classroom atmosphere, I hope to create powerful individual writers, readers, and thinkers. I will allow them to explore, posit, wonder, discover, discard, oppose, reconcile, tinker, and trudge through their own personal experiences, opinions, ideas, and identities. (I still teach students how to writer personally. First and foremost. That, I seriously doubt, will ever change. I think kids enjoy my room and learning inside it. I don't accomplish what I want. I fail every day. But I've learned to accept that I can't change all students. Sometimes in an 85 minute class, I can only get ten minutes out of them. I can live with that. Sometimes I have to resort to addition by subtraction - some kids can't cut it and are dropped. I can live with that).

Then I will redefine their misconstrued ideas of expository writing. Here we will be curious researchers -- okay I stole that one from Ken Macrorie -- as we use inquiry first to ask questions and find tentative answers. Then and only then, will we begin to assert our answers and strive to demonstrate our hypotheses -- in other words, to prove our theses. I don't want my students to see the world or literature as simply a bunch of possible theses to be proven. We will explore and then attempt to demonstrate and prove. (I did the I-search paper quite a bit in my first few years of American Lit and Brit Lit right out of grad school. But I've been guilty of moving away from it. Now I've totally dropped the research paper. There just isn't enough time. I'm all for those grandiose ideas I wrote about four years ago, but it's just not practical for me now. Sometimes - as in my American Lit class, for example - it's all I can do to get the kids to read. That's it. Just read. I can get a few to do all of those things I wrote about. But a large portion of the kids never accomplish any of those things. Now I'm happy with attaining just a good discussion about a story and how it relates to them).

Likewise my students will encounter a variety of forms of writing. I want to use free writing more than I ever (and if I do it once, it is already more than I have ever used it before). I want them to experience writing as a journey, not a destination. It will even be okay for them to get to the end of the paper and realize that their line of thought is all wrong. In fact, I want to have students write a "research" paper involving two contradictory sources of information. Thus, if they choose the "death penalty" as a topic, they will have to have one source advocating it and another protesting it. In their paper they will attempt to analyze each person's argument. Ultimately, they will choose their own opinion and state and support it. I want to experiment with the portfolio grading system. (I still use ferreting, though not as much as I planned. I do teach writing as a process. I never used to do this. If there's one thing I'm most proud of, it's the fact that my kids write much better than they used to. And so do I. Even with my current Comp I class, their essays struggle with mechanics. But in terms of interest, creativity, and voice, they are joys to read. So now the key to teaching for writing for me is not necessarily to focus on proof reading and copy editing level errors. Instead I focus on clarifying and showing in their essays. I'm most proud of this. This is what I do best).

I will design a unit where groups of students will run and teach the class. I plan to use it when we read short stories. As it stands now, I will divide the class into groups. Each group will be responsible for an element of the short story. One will have "point of view," another will have "elements of plot," another will have "character," another will have "theme," and so on. These groups will meet with me at designated times. They will design worksheets, lectures, discussion topics, lesson objectives, tests, and quizzes. I will even allow them to give each other discipline. But they have to decide what the punishment is and be there for it. If it is detention before school, they will have to be there along with the recipient of the detention. I will get to be a class member. Of course, I plan on acting up and failing a couple of tests and getting detention. Turnabout is fair play. (I forgot all about this. I'll have to save this for next year).

I will not use a teacher's text. Students will not have textbooks they carry with them. If we read from them, I will keep them in class. I will use handouts. Why? I don't want to fall into the routine of reading someone else's interpretation of a work. I don't want to be tempted to assign questions 1-15 at the end of the chapter. I want to do more "teaching on my feet" or "teaching on the fly" and see where the moment takes us. (Now this is ironic - considering we are in the midst of ordering all new textbooks, which I most certainly WILL use. But I don't use a text for Comp I, II, or College Comp. The students writings are our text. In American Lit, I use the text about 15% of the time. In Brit Lit, I use a text about 85% of the time. But after going through the process of selecting a textbook and thoroughly examining them, I'm sold on the textbook we've selected. Will I rely totally on it? No. But textbooks and all of the accessories that come with them are truly light years ahead of any texts I had in high school and college. In a way I'm looking at the new textbooks as a kind of freedom. Now I spend so much time developing worksheets and guides and other assignments to go with the things I teach that aren't in the textbook. The new textbooks have already done most of that for me. That frees me up to do a lot of other things in my classes - like maybe designing how to implement the assignment I discussed in the previous paragraph).

Finally, I want to design a web page for our classes. Students can post their work. I can put my syllabus on them. Students can, and I realize I am being very idealistic here, establish chat rooms where we can discuss assignments and projects. We can all use code names and establish anonymity. Think of the freedom and the personas that would be available! (I haven't tried this yet - mostly because I haven't put the time into developing this idea. But I plan to try it with my College Comp class next year. I guess this blog grew out of my desire to incorporate technology into my teaching. But I've also seen how difficult it is to try and use - no scratch that - to even GET technology. So this one is incomplete or at least to be continued).

Ultimately, I would like to devote summers and a few evenings to post graduate school. I would like to seek a degree in English education. In the name of ultimate renewal, I would like to teach English teachers. (A pipe dream. Like running my home town newspaper. Would I love to do it? Yes. Would I be good at it? I think so. But I'm having the time of my life doing what I love right now. My persona life - though I've lost both parents since then - is light-years from where it was when I originally devised this. I wouldn't trade that for anything).