Feeling Good

I like those days when I feel like a rock star. Not a "I'm-totally-being-recognized-for-all-the-work-I'm-doing" rock star. A "something worked" rock star. A "I might be on the right track" rock star. A "something I came up with is doing what I wanted it to do" rock star.

I have professional goals. I want to get published (I am pursuing all sorts of venues for publication and hey, I'm young) and I want to work my way to presenting at NCTE. But more important than those professional goals, every year I make new discoveries of what I want my students to be able do. The more I learn the better I get. Some experiments blow up in my face, but while I graded one of my more recent experiments I excitedly discovered that I might be on to something.

We watched Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee at the end of our Native American Indian myth unit. i had students complete a response guide, not a study guide, that I worked on during the summer months. The form was simple enough, but it did what I wanted it to. It forced students to consider their own personal responses to the film and make connections to the project they had just completed, and challenged them to think outside of the unit and see how experiences and knowledge, past and present, helps enhance their understanding of a single piece we were watching in class. Not everyone did exactly what I wanted them to do, but many of them were on the right track, and many more did better than stay on the right track.

Today's grading experience gives me hope for this year, that maybe I have started to crack the code. I know that I will still have frustrating moments, that sometimes they will fail to do what I want them to do. It won't likely be due to them willfully ignoring instructions. It will most likely be related to a need for clarification and re-emphasis of the importance of following those instructions, but in the end I hope they will leave my classroom able to analyze and connect everything that they do in my classroom. That would make me feel like a real rock star.