In my 10th grade English class, my teacher, Mr. H. started each class by asking us to spend five minutes writing a response to whatever question or quote he had written on the blackboard. He would call these assignments "think-ays" instead of "essays" - I think this is funny now. I guess he just meant that we were supposed to get our thoughts out without worrying whether they were organized correctly, etc. He would post such general ponderings as “What is truth?” “What is hatred?” and “What is love?” or specific quotes such as Nietzsche’s “All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” Sitting in a classroom packed with rows of desks, we would write, retreating inwards, delving into words we may have heard repeatedly but never examined or unpacked. This teacher valued the creative connections that we made between our thoughts and the texts, and between our lives and the texts. He cared about our individual personalities and backgrounds enough to say to us that each one of us was a vital component of the group. He also chose questions and quotes that connected to his goal of promoting and exploring topics of social justice through teaching and discussion. Quality teaching supports individuals to create their own understanding of a topic by making connections with their own prior knowledge, experiences, or philosophies on life.
Yeah, so that is part of the last essay that I wrote for class. Here I start my second semester of this program. I'm off to read about teacher preparation programs (both traditional and "alternative" - like what I did) and why teachers don't stay in teaching...
1 comment:
I wonder, how many students were in this 10th grade English class? Because, while I think what Mr. H was doing was a great idea, I feel like my high school English classes would have been too large to properly discuss our thoughts after the writing and also get on to the business of the day. My AP English class senior year was packed--it must have had over 30 people in it.
Thanks for sharing your essay excerpt. I don't know if I could really pick a favorite teacher from all my years in school, I had many. But maybe Mrs. M, my middle school social studies teacher, who had us play "Social Studies Jeopardy" the day before every test. She drew a Jeopardy board on the blackboard with different topics pertaining to the test and different difficulty levels, then we split into two or three teams and raced each other to answer the questions. It was a great way to review, to see what you still needed to study, and to have fun. She actually made us look forward to tests. That's hard to do. =)
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