I been criticized for being too negative about teaching in my comics. I don’t think that assessment is fair. Mr. Fitz is really intended as a Valentine to teaching and teachers. It’s just that there is so much getting in the way of great teaching these days – and much of it is on display during pre-planning week, which I finish up tomorrow. So as a reminder for myself as I get ready for my 33rd set of students to arrive on Monday, August 12th, and perhaps as a reminder for myself, I would like to list some of the things l love about teaching tonight. No mention of the frustrations – except the ones that turn to joys.
I won’t be able to list all the things I love about teaching. There are too many things I love, and besides, it’s the end of pre-planning week! I’m a little tired. So… here they are.
I love planning my year. A good school year in English is like a good novel, or a thrilling play. Or better yet, like a musical. You have an overture of some sort to set the mood. You need an opening number to let students know what the year will be about. You build skills, but you also build interest, suspense even. The year needs variety: some ballads, some show-stoppers, big production numbers. And a great finale. The students aren’t just audience members – they get to help write the show and perform it.
I love figuring out how to get students to do things they haven’t been able to do before. My best ideas have come out of frustration with my students. They say they have nothing to write about? Enthusiasm and frustration maps! They write clunky sentences? Clunker clinic! Bad proofreading? A Proofreading Epic titled Genre Jumpers that spans the year as students battle the Grammanator, who can kill characters with punctuation and spelling! They have trouble creating word pictures? The Angry Teacher lesson!
I love asking big questions that take all year to answer, and letting students explore and eventually answer those questions. What is the secret to happiness? How do we define success? What kinds of power do people have, and how can they use them creatively – or destructively? What is the purpose of education?
I love choosing my texts: just the right short stories, essays, blogs, comics, poems, plays, and novels, each one chosen to deepen their understanding not just of reading but of life, the universe, and everything. I love pairing texts that contradict each other so that students must figure out which one they agree with – or how to reconcile the paradox.
I love reading aloud to my students. It doesn’t matter how old they are. You read a great story and do some voices, and they are hooked.
I love passing on my passion for reading and writing. I love that I get to show them what love of words and stories and books and writing looks like.
I love coming up with writing exercises and assignments that help them grow. They need work on sensory detail? I give them a scenario – you wake up blindfolded, bound and gagged – and try to figure out where you are just by sound, smell, and touch. They need to work on action? Write about a desperate mad dash to class.
I love setting them completely free to write – no prompt. I love seeing what they invent.
I love getting to know my students as human being through their writing, and through their reactions to what they read.
I love having my students ask their own questions rather than having them answer mine.
I love it when they notice something about a story or play or novel that I’d never noticed before.
I love walking around the room listening to their small group discussions, or hearing them work on a creative project together, or hearing them peer conference each other’s writing.
I love it when they perform a five-minute Romeo and Juliet for the class, or a talk show with the characters from Romeo and Juliet as the guests.
I love it when they realize that words can change your perception of reality. When they read to introduction to a book called Rapt and realize that your life is what you pay attention to.
I love it when the unexpected and hysterically funny happens, like when Kristen had a lizard in her hair and didn’t realize it. The screams were so loud, they thought there had been a fight in my room.
I love a silent classroom as my students all write in silence, immersed in their words, or read their own books in silence, immersed in someone else’s words.
I love decorating my classroom, and then decorating it more with student work.
I love greeting them at the door. I love talking to the students who linger a bit as they pack up at the end.
I love finding notes from students months or years after I originally received them, re-reading them, and remembering those students.
I love the creativity of bringing out their creativity.
I love helping them become better, more thoughtful humans.
I love the fact that if they don’t like my class, they can be pretty honest about it. They keep you humble.
But then there are the ones who tell you that you made all the difference, that you have literally helped them see the world differently, themselves differently. And all you can do is be grateful you had the chance to make such a difference. Not everybody gets that.
And even the frustrating days are usually followed by days that are magical. Or at least less frustrating.
I love the fresh start each year, the chance to try to get it right – or at least “righter.”
So when I don’t sleep well the night before the first day of school, it isn’t so much nervous tension as it is the night before your birthday or a holiday – the butterflies in the stomach, the listening for sleigh bells in the snow.
At it’s best, it is the best job in the world.