Teaching Thought #46
Use the right type of seed in your classroom.
Cultivate your classroom culture. This podcast takes a very interesting look at culture.
What are the things that are tangible or you can measure to show great culture?
Element #2 – Seed – This is a combination between the right team and the right opportunity. How are you going to get the students producing what you want them to produce? Are they willing to work? Are they supportive? Do they care? What opportunities are you giving your students?
For me, this comes down two things: expectations and environment. It’s easy for my College Comp I and II classes. Those are the best and brightest. Let’s look at my Lit and Lang 9R class. Those kids dislike English, namely reading and (to a lesser extent) writing.
The moment they walk into my room I have an expectation: we are going to boost their reading skills by reading a lot of really cool stuff and discussing it. We are going to examine author’s craft and using textual evidence. We are going to practice main idea, fact and opinion, inferences, sequence, and drawing conclusions. And we are going to read, read, read, and read some more. We will write too, but my main emphasis is one reading cool stuff and getting you to enjoy English again.
The environment I try and create is one of caring, humor, and fun. I know sometimes fun is a dirty word lately in education, but if you’re not having fun, you are a lot less likely to do something. And the wonderful thing about teaching – or coaching or being a boss – is to get the the hard work to seem like fun.
So I tell my students early on that this is going to be the most engaging English class they’ve ever had. I tell them that we will read at least five books (To Kill a Mockingbird, Winterkill, Curse of a Winterkill, The Thief of Always, and a free reading novel of their own choice). And we do. And the kids like it. I won’t say they love it; some do. In fact, I’ve had my most memorable teaching experiences with my Lit and Lang 9R students. One came as a result of the defunct Kaffir Boy unit. My class, made up of African Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians had one of the most insightful conversations on race, stereotypes, and perceptions that I’ve had in 20 years. A few years later, I had one student – when the verdict for the Tom Robinson trial was delivered in To Kill a Mockingbird – pull the hood up on his sweatshirt, put his head down on his desk, and bawl his little eyes out at the injustice of it. Broke my heart. And last year when we were at the climax of The Thief of Always. A student – who by no means was a reader – inferred that one of the main characters as going to be released from an evil spell, and, thus, die at long last, she uttered these words, “Oh no! I’m going to cry.” That’s the power of a great story.
In terms of culture, at this stage, I’ve worked hard to make the soil fertile. Now I’ve added the seeds and conditioned them to make the most out of the soil they’re stuck in.
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