In the process of creating a model lesson to present to this charter school next week, I am made painfully aware of how far I've come from "good teaching." It's as if I have been in a strange vise for two years. Each professional development workshop or staff meeting has twisted me a little bit more, slowly squeezing out any hint of passion, creativity, or understanding for student centered instruction. I have forty five minutes to wow them, yet when I think of teaching a writing lesson I can't get beyond a topic sentence and three supporting details. There is so much more to writing than a topic sentence and three supporting details!
I have been reading the two small pamphlets on Expeditionary Learning that I borrowed from the school. On the first page, a quote from Socrates: "Know thyself." Then, "Experiences that engage the emotions generate self discovery."
Am I supposed to engage their emotions? Am I supposed to take risks? To face them with something that is jarring, moving, and then proceed from there? I know that if I arrive with a simple "SAYSEEDO" lesson on writing a constructed response to a bloody standardized test prompt (which is all I was supposed to be teaching for the past month... I have been teaching poetry instead) I am out. If I did the same in my current school, I would be extolled as a genius. It has been so long since I have taken risks in my teaching, I am almost afraid to do it. And yet, I fear that if I do not take risks, I will seem too conservative.
I must know myself and go with that. First, it will take a bit of remembering.
1 comment:
i've no advice - you know that. a daunting task, but a great daunt, if such a thing can exist.
what do you want to learn if you were a kid in that lesson? what do you want to teach, or to help them try to learn?
for ever it feels like I've been saying, plan backward. what's the what , the thing and how do you get to it?
you know this in your brain memory and your body memory. it's under all the teachtothetest crap. you can do this, jes. xo
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