My Heart is Happy :)

Today is the reason I want to be a teacher. I couldn’t have planned a better reception of today’s lesson from my students. It almost brought me to tears (surprise, surprise…). I’ve been working really hard on my lessons. I want my students to take something away from every lesson, learn what they need to know to succeed in future English classes, and I also want them to have fun in my classroom because who said learning has to be dull?

Today was mine. It’s the first time I have ever taught an original lesson all period, all day long. I’m not kidding when I tell you that I lost sleep over it last night. What if the lesson is too long and we can’t finish? What if I have to rush through it and they sit there dumbfounded? What if the lesson isn’t long enough and there’s 30 minutes left when I’m done? What if they hate it? What if they think I’m stupid? What if I’m late? Oh God, is my alarm set? I fell asleep for real around 3 am… I woke up at 5:41 am. Fun.

Since it’s early Wednesday and I needed to issue textbooks, I decided that starting with a poem was a good idea. We read for the first 10 minutes, then GTL (glorified timeless language aka famous quotes) which they reflect on. I had to prod a little for people to read their responses out loud, but they did and they were brilliant. Next was vocabulary. The adolescent mind can learn, and I mean really learn, about 20 new words a week. Factoring in vocabulary words that other subjects might require, I’m going to try to do about 10 or less a week. In my opinion, vocabulary should be taught in context. This way I can avoid the question “but when am I everrrr going to use thiiiiis? Waaah”. My answer: “Right now. These 2 or 3 words are in the story/play/novel/poem that we’re about to read. I’m helping you understand. You’re welcome.” Today’s vocabulary words were countenance and romp.

We then moved on to the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. I passed out the paper with the poem on it and had the students keep it face down. I showed them a picture of Roethke, gave them some background information and had them write it down. Then I wrote “WALTZ” on the board and opened discussion, enforcing the raise-your-hand rule. “What is a waltz? What do you think of when you hear the word ‘waltz’? What kind of music? Are there words? It’s a dance? What kind? What do you see in your mind? Do you hear/see/feel anything?” and other questions like that. Then I played The Blue Danube for them so they could hear a waltz. Each class period I started with a new list and while a lot of people responded the same way, there were still answers that differed in each period. Mostly they said they thought of balls, rich people, happiness/lightheartedness, inspiration, and relaxation.

Then I had two different students read the poem at a slow pace. I thought that hearing the poem twice and from two different people would help the poem sink in and allow them to catch things they didn’t get at first. Then I asked them what was going on in the poem and I was met with the instantaneous response of “CHILD ABUSE!” Impressive. I wrote a few initial reactions on the board (the dad’s drunk, little boy narrator, mom’s mad, etc.) then broke the poem down, line by line. They all caught on to the imagery immediately.

We talked about the differences between what we wrote down under “waltz” and what the poem was actually about. No, this isn’t a happy poem. Are they actually dancing? Is the kid enjoying this? Then I had them circle the words/phrases they associated with fun and being happy and underline the words they associate with physical and/or mental abuse. Then, they called out the answers as I wrote their answers on the board. We then talked about how some words were in both columns (romp, whiskey, etc) and how which column some words were in depends on the context of the word (beat time on my head, mother’s countenance, etc).

I have never seen so many hands in the air- everybody wanted to talk. And this is not an exaggeration, people: *NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON WASN’T PAYING ATTENTION. Every student was taking notes and participating. Every. Single. Student. Did I really manage to engage 72 students throughout the day? Are you joking me? Heck yeaaaahhhh :)

At the end of 1^st period, I gave them about 2 minutes to get their stuff together and chat quietly. A male student walked right up to me with his paper COVERED in notes and wanted to know more. “Is this a true story? Was the author the son in the poem? The father?” What an adorable, inquisitive doll. 2^nd period loved it and all seemed to agree that the dad and son were actually dancing. But, the absolute highlight of my day came at the end of 4^th period. They’re all sophomores and since it’s the end of the day, it’s hard to keep them quiet. I had to remind them 259865 times to raise their hands (I guess I wasn’t tooooo upset that they all wanted to talk so much that they couldn’t wait to be called on) but they were loud. So when I heard one male student getting loud, I told him to quiet down or stop talking. That’s when the girl he was talking to said to me, “Sorry, he was telling me more about his thoughts on the poem”. Uh- whaaaat? This kid, 15 year old who looks like he’d NEVER read anything, let alone get in a deep literary discussion, had been speaking all period long. I somehow managed to engage him so much that he was STILL talking about the poem at the end of the period when I gave him free time. Wow.

I told them I chose this poem to start with because I’m a big reader’s response person. I don’t think there’s one right answer when dealing with poetry and I let them know that as long as they could back up their response, the answer would be correct. You could tell me a dog wrote the poem and if your explanation is legitimate and you back it up, you will get the points. They liked that.

So, that was my day. I know this post is really long and I’m sorry about that but I’m just so happy with the reaction from all 3 periods. And as far as timing, I spaced everything out perfectly. There was 2 minutes or less left in every period and I covered everything I wanted to. Oh, and if you haven’t ever read “My Papa’s Waltz”… do it :)