Overall, my students are very intelligent people. They prove their intelligence and courage every day they show up to class. First of all, no person makes it to fifteen-years-old without being intelligent. Second of all, if experience is our best teacher, then these students should be teaching me. My struggle as their teacher is to meet them with the intellectual stimulation an intelligent fifteen-year old deserves while providing the skills they need to improve their third grade reading and writing levels. I am frequently balancing this disparity while attempting to provide the students alternative means for expressing their various literacies.
Conveniently, English skills are spiraling, and therefore the skills they practiced in third grade are the same skills we must practice in ninth grade. Inconveniently, we often struggle with the deeper comprehension that ninth grade skills demand. In a sense, it is like teaching an adult English Language Learner. Such students have complex and intelligent questions and opinions, but they lack the vocabulary to express them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey man, what a great outlook, and one I frequently forget to focus on in my classroom. Just being in school shows that my students want to succeed, and that they desire to have an education. It is very overwhelming to realize all the obstacles so many of these students face. It reminds me of two years ago when a really bright student of mine walked through the donations line at the local mission to get a turkey with her family, and I handed it to her. It's shocking realizing that these same students who are in our classes are dealing with an abject poverty that I rarely see or confront withing the confines of school. And sometimes, that means that the best thing I can give my students is a smile, a friendly handshake, and the hard work that it takes to be a teacher. Hope your journey is treating you well, talk to you later.
oops... left this on the wrong blog posting. I meant to leave this on the new posting... reposting now.
Post a Comment