Picture it: You have had a solidly good day of teaching. Not great, but skills are being grown, tasks accomplished, and relevant questions voiced. Of course, it is the week before Spring Break, so I gave a reminder (or two) about Break being next week, so this week, we are still "locked in".
That one class. Everyone has had one. They aren't bad, but we do struggle with impulse control, maturity, keeping personal opinions about anyone or anything private, and, of course, talking constantly. As the Instructional Assistant was not present today, it was me, myself, and I with 14 students of varying levels of developmentally-appropriate teenage egocentrism. The bell rang, I closed the door, and I waited for them to quiet down. I am not a teacher who believes in silence being necessary to learn. If you can ignore the quiet murmur, excellent. That class does not believe in murmurs, it is a full on cacophony of clashing thoughts and opinions.
In the first draft of this post, I had written each time I had to pause and wait for students to be ready and quiet down. I have decided to shift to a more positive gear and let you know that the total time I spent waiting for students to quiet down to the point where more than three or four of them could hear me at a time was 26 minutes.
Moving on.
We read an "Article of the Week" about why our noses have two holes, rather than one. Truly fascinating information and science: "Okay, but like, wouldn't one big hole be better?", "WHERE are you finding this stuff?" (discussing where a sentence was in the article), "It's at the second divot ... yea, the divot, right?" (they meant indent, as one indents a paragraph), and "Is 'olfactory' like ... an old factory? Like your brain is old? I bet it means brain!".
We talked about Emily Dickinson: "Wasn't she the lady who never left her room?", "Wait! We read her before ... what was it?", and my personal favorite: "Didn't she die in some fire?" (for context, he was thinking of "some other lady").
We watched a quick background video on Dickinson: "This lady [Dickinson scholar] is glazing over this chick [Dickinson]." and "Is it a museum or like a separate part for her?".
We dove into her poem "Tell all the truth but tell it slant": "Hold .. wait .. lightning? Why are the kids being struck by ... waaiiiiit", "Holy crap. I think I understand poetry.", "So, she's like saying the truth should be a secret? But like, a bright secret?", "Duh! A circuit, bro. Like a ciiiiiiircuuuuuit." (shockingly, this did not help the other student's understanding), and "The kids aren't being struck by lightning! Truth is the lightning that we are getting struck by!" (lightning commenter from before).
We headed into a literary analysis wheel of the poem: "No. Nope. No.", "Why are you measuring a baseball field right now?", "What do you mean by [insert poetic device that was already defined, given examples for, and asked if there were any questions on the previous slide]?", "Full sentences? Of what? EXAMPLES?! Like from the POEM? Wrap it up, bro!" (I was "bro", but that wasn't the biggest fish to fry today), "You should have just shut up, we have no time to read OR play a Kahoot now!" (this was to several peers), and "There are questions too? Are you trying to kill us?".
The period was filled with distractions, but also some incredible insight into a challenging poet and poem. While several students were stuck on the main idea of the poem, many more dove in and identified relevant symbolism, figurative language, conflict, and more!
I will take the win today :)
Your musings coupled with the sound bites from “varying levels of developmentally-appropriate teenage egocentrism” are comic gold. I love the “old factory” comment and the questioning about “the lady” who died in the fire. You capture middle school so well in this slice.
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