The following is about an event that took place during my third field placement.
Picture this. I'm teaching English 20-2 and my students just don't care. We've tried films, played games, read aloud and silently, written essays and short stories. Nothing seems to get them excited. So, one day, I'm sitting in my classroom eating my lunch, when one of my students, we'll call him Mark, comes running in. "Miss! Miss! You have ti see this thing we did in Math! It was so cool! Here let me show you!" Mark proceeds to write out this math trick on the board for me. Now you need to understand that Mark is one of my weakest students. He struggles with basic literacy, analytical thinking and basic content retention. He also hates sitting still.
So here's Mark, who tells me at least once a day that he hates my class, super excited over a MATH problem. He performs his trick a few times just to make sure I really understand how cool math is and then looks at me and says "why can't ELA be that cool?". I was stumped. I think ELA is that cool, but how to explain to eighteen year old that semi-colons can be sexy or that a great argument can be satisfying. Like any good teacher, I calmly tell him to wait and see, and then go home an agonize over what to do. At about 2 am it comes to me- Riddles! The next day, Mark comes into class and there's a riddle on the board. He sits down and immediately works at figuring it out, and for that brief moment I made ELA "cool".
Picture this. I'm teaching English 20-2 and my students just don't care. We've tried films, played games, read aloud and silently, written essays and short stories. Nothing seems to get them excited. So, one day, I'm sitting in my classroom eating my lunch, when one of my students, we'll call him Mark, comes running in. "Miss! Miss! You have ti see this thing we did in Math! It was so cool! Here let me show you!" Mark proceeds to write out this math trick on the board for me. Now you need to understand that Mark is one of my weakest students. He struggles with basic literacy, analytical thinking and basic content retention. He also hates sitting still.
So here's Mark, who tells me at least once a day that he hates my class, super excited over a MATH problem. He performs his trick a few times just to make sure I really understand how cool math is and then looks at me and says "why can't ELA be that cool?". I was stumped. I think ELA is that cool, but how to explain to eighteen year old that semi-colons can be sexy or that a great argument can be satisfying. Like any good teacher, I calmly tell him to wait and see, and then go home an agonize over what to do. At about 2 am it comes to me- Riddles! The next day, Mark comes into class and there's a riddle on the board. He sits down and immediately works at figuring it out, and for that brief moment I made ELA "cool".