I have mixed feelings about the week I just finished. I am working with my students on a number of different projects. My ninth graders are giving oral presentations, my eleventh graders are studying American poetry, and my twelfth graders are holding a debate to sentence a murderer either to execution or life in prison. So far, eleventh grade is my favorite. This is probably due to the fact that I love literature, and it is my favorite thing to teach. Or it could be due to the fact that my eleventh graders are always open to whatever I bring to class. I have a theory on this. My students seemed to have been raised in an environment where the teacher teaches and the students take notes and occasionally participate. My eleventh grade classes are the closest I have to this system. I don't teach while they take notes, but I am working with tangible "knowledge" that they can acquire. They think that learning the names of poets and working to interpret poetry is a worthwhile task for an English class. It is "facts" instead of just discussion, and they can use their skills in interpreting poems on tests that they will take. My ninth and twelfth graders are a little freer. Both are supposed to be discussion classes, but I rarely bring to class discussions based on tangible knowledge that students perceive as school worthy. My ninth graders seemed to be confused as to why we would spend two weeks holding discussions on the various types of stereotypes and the way stereotypes are used in the media, and my twelfth graders told me that school policy doesn't affect them after this year, and so, they don't need to talk about it. Students are taught that school is a place to learn certain types of information. They rarely think of it in terms of skills that they learn or new ways of approaching material. Instead, they think primarily in terms of what knowledge they are picking up.
So, I've been trying to find ways to engage my students in the discussion classes. The problem so far is that one subject engages some of my students while others are left completely bored. And I have far too many students who never attempt to participate, whether that is because they are bored or because they see no need to participate unless forced or extremely interested. Unfortunately, those who do not participate are often the ones with the weakest language skills (probably another reason they don't participate). They could benefit from practice in the language. I think I'm going to have to move to small group projects. The ninth graders are doing presentations, which they seem to like (although they don't always pay attention to other peoples' presentations). They like the form of it, though. It is something they have done before, and they understand it. I think that my twelfth graders will be moving into a project on the concept of utopia. The idea is to talk about the meaning of utopia, possibly read part of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and then have them work in groups to design a utopia. It might be something they actually become interested in and invested in. At least, I hope they do. When you only see your students once a week for forty minutes, what is the best course of action? Try to engage those who are least engaged, or just try to engage a majority of the active students and continually move forward, leaving those who are reluctant behind? What is the third option?? It is a difficult question and a difficult situation. It is times like these when I wish I saw my students every day. Actually, I wish that often. Especially when they continually forget assignments because they haven't seen me in a week or two...
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