A "Whoa" Moment

This past week, I was observed by my Teach For America program director. I always dread seeing the email from him in my inbox saying its time to sign up for observations, because I hate, hate, hate being observed. I love getting feedback to make my practice better, but if I could somehow be observed without ever having to know I was getting observed, it would probably be a whole lot better. I hate having someone else in my room watching me- which is odd, I suppose, for someone who did a ton of theater when she was in middle, high school, and college, but that's just the way it is.

Anyway, I asked my PD to come into one of my classes that behaviorally can go either way- some days they are angels and some days they are devils (oh 7th grade boys!)- but more importantly, they had hit an academic plateau from which I seemed unable to raise them, and I needed help figuring out what to do next. It was good to have my PD in my room, because he helped me with some strategies for that, but that's not really what I was so happy about. What I did get psyched about was when we had our debriefing meeting, and he mentioned that he had talked to one of my students to ask a few questions about what we were learning (it was a lesson on Egyptian mythology and the afterlife), and then he asked the BIG question: Why are you learning this? Why is this important?

There are times when I dread this question from my students, because sometimes the best answer I can give is: It's in my curriculum, so I'm supposed to. Obviously, I come up with something else, and if I really believe in my objective, there really IS a reason they are learning it. However, my students rarely see things this way-there is always someone who complains about how irrelevant the Egyptian god Osiris is to their lives today. Now, I happen to love mythology, and could go on forever about why this is important culturally, but this is sometimes (read: almost always...) lost on 7th graders.

However, my student blew my PD (and me, when I heard about it later) away with his answer to this question. He said that we still have a concept of the afterlife today, and although its different from the Egyptian concept of the afterlife, there are a lot of similarities and it's important to know this so we can see where I beliefs came from...

I would like to think I taught him this and he will now go on to deeply love history and the social studies as a way of learning about why we are who we are today and whatnot. However, I fear that may not be the case: when I asked this student what he said after I noticed them talking, he said "Oh, he asked me some really random question, but don't worry, I BSed some kind of answer and made you look good." Small steps, I suppose :)

One Week Down...

We are back at school this week, and what a week it has been. Nothing was harder than getting up at 5:45 on Monday morning after not having had to do that for several weeks. However, I was excited to go back to school in many ways, because I made several resolutions that I am hoping are going to help me become a better teacher. Sticking to them, though, has been less than easy.

More than anything, I am trying to be a more engaging teacher. I have heard from various sources lately that, while my lessons are solid and I set the bar high for my students, I am not good at adding the fun into learning. I am surprised at how difficult I am finding this to do- I guess as a student who always wanted to learn, I didn't need to have teachers that used "gimmicks" to get our attention- but with my students I really do need to. This week, I added music- Revolution songs- to my lesson on the first battles of the Revolutionary War, and it went over with mixed results. Some of my students still thought it was boring, even though I was excited for it. I guess the bottom line is, I really need to start going out on a limb to get my students engaged and excited for work in class.