A Gift of a Teaching Day

I had a good teaching day yesterday, which happily, is not unusual, but it is unusual for the class in which it happened.  It's a class that has unruly energy, an energy that I can refocus a bit, but not usually for the whole class period, which means I leave the class feeling like a failure.  

Let me stress that I am not actually failing them--their writing has improved.  I persevere in teaching the concepts and having them practice, despite the rolling of the eyes and the overly dramatic heavy sighs.  

Yesterday, I started the last module of the class, which will be one where we look at different ways to approach writing, ways which involve more creativity.  I had them write a description of a pine cone yesterday, and tomorrow, I'll have them sketch the pine cone and then write a description again, to see if there are other ways of training ourselves to see and then describe.

Then I gave them the standard definition of a haiku which irritates those who have mastered the form, the syllable counting form of haiku.  I had them try one of their own.  I modeled for them, counting syllables.  And then I talked about how a haiku could connect an element of nature with something that was happening in society or in one's life, about how linking the two could lead to something even more profound.

Yesterday I pulled up Dave Bonta's marvelous website of haiku, micropoems, and photos.   We talked about a few specific ones--the election one was an easy entry.

One of the students in the small group that has seemed most resistant to the work of the class noticed the poem about seeds and cracks and the light getting in.  He gave an interpretation, which the other members of the small group disparaged, which made him go deeper, which in turn made the other members of the group cheer for him.  I pulled up the Leonard Cohen song which wouldn't play, but then I was able to get the song lyrics at least.

We then talked about the ways that these poems and song lyrics take huge concepts and distill them into something smaller and perhaps pointed and piercing.  The energy in the room was electric, and when it was time to go, several of the students said, "Wait, aren't we gonna read our haiku?" 

These are not students who have clamored to stay in the past.  They are ready to leave from the moment that class begins.  I assured them that we would return to haiku on Thursday, and if they wanted to read, they could.

I had a successful morning class too, where we talked about three different approaches to Suzanne Simard's work on how trees communicate.  We watched her TED talk, looked at her scientific article, and read a newspaper article.  We will create an annotated Works Cited page with those sources, and next week we'll look at other sources.  Students will finish the work of the term by writing a paper which refers to some of these sources and talking about which one inspired the most wonder and trying to analyze why.

It's the rare teaching day when all of the classes go well, when I can see students making connections, or at the very least doing the work.  I usually feel lucky if just one class hums along.  Yesterday was a gift, the kind of day that makes me feel like I'm doing the work I was put on earth to do.