Month: June 2025

There, their, they’re

I’m losing them and there’s no time to think this all the way through. The class is smallish today because it’s Eid al-Fitr. Split-second decision: I go for it.

“Let’s play a game!” I clap my hands together. Faces look up. At least one cell phone gets pushed into a desk.

“A good game?” someone asks.

I shake my head. “Always a teacher game.” They’ve heard me say this so many times, I half expect them to chime in, but they don’t. Wow. We are really disengaged. Before they have time to complain, I start counting them off. “Remember your number. Use your fingers.”

Six groups of three. I tell the students to push their tables towards the back of the room. As the metal legs scrape across the linoleum floors, I write there, their, and they’re on whiteboards – one up front and one on either side of the room. 

I turn around and clap again: “Everyone to the centre of the room!”

I wish I could tell you that they are excited, but mostly they sort of drag themselves suspiciously into what is generally the centre. Hmm… I am going to have to be the one to light this fire.

My brain churns. Clarity is key. On a good day, I’ve pre-planned the activity and thought through the steps, so I can give directions efficiently and effectively. Today, however, I’m winging it. Exams loom, the Chromebooks aren’t available, it’s a Monday…and it’s raining. The students are standing in the centre of the room, looking at me warily.

“Ok! Each group has three people. For every round of this game, one of those three people has to move AND it has to be a different person for each round. You can consult with each other, but every team member has to take a turn being it.”

Oh, now they’re paying attention. “It?” Yup.

I explain that I will read a sentence that uses one of the forms of there/ their/ they’re. The team whose runner touches the board with the correct form first will get a point. Then, we’ll do it again with new runners and a new sentence. I indicate the whiteboards with the various forms. I tell them that I plan to move fast, so they should have the next runner ready to go once the first one is done.

Chaos ensues. We whip through the sentences I had originally planned for us to do as a worksheet, then keep going with another handful. Students are laughing and sweaty. Heck, I am laughing and sweaty. I have to settle a few near-arguments about which form is correct. We pause for everyone to catch their breath, and I change the words on the board to its/ it’s. We play another round. Eventually, class is nearly over. We have just enough time to move the desks back. The winning team gets to choose a gift from the “box of terrible prizes.”

“These really are terrible,” one of them mutters, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve reviewed, and the students are ready for the homophones that I know are on the test. Plus, it was fun.

****

(Pull back the curtain)
“But… how did you think of that?” my younger colleague asks when I tell the story after school. It’s a good question. In the classroom, we often have to think on our feet, and I’ve realized that I have a series of questions that help me make choices:

  • What do the students need to know?
    Tricky homophones
  • Why do they need to know it?
    For the test
    • Why is it on the test?
      Silly or not, using these words correctly is an entrée into a certain level of education/ standing in the world; this is clout.
  • What’s standing in their way?
    Boredom, widely varied levels of knowledge, lack of urgency (they don’t care about this)
  • What options do we have to learn this material?
    Worksheets (boring), computers (someone else booked them), independent work (won’t hit the Goldilocks zone in this class – it will be either too easy or too hard), pair work, group work…
  • How does this group of students learn?
    They like talking and moving, but they don’t 100% trust each other.
    They do well with competition and speed but not too much pressure.
  • What would make this memorable for them?
    Movement, working at the board
  • How can I put all that together?

It doesn’t always work, but this is more or less where my brain goes when I’m planning. What? Why? How? What would make this stick?

And, of course, it never hurts to embrace a little chaos.

Twelve Days

In 12 days, he will be done with high school. Today, however, he is sitting in my classroom during his “spare” period, trying to catch up on what he’s missed. He has his earbuds in, his phone out. He’s using one of my Sharpies to write a thesis on a scrap piece of paper.

He will not catch up.

I’ve known him since his first day of grade 9, and I’ve taught him English three times. Usually, when I say that out loud, I put air quotes around “taught”. When he was in grade 9, I hid the Sharpies and push pins from him so that he wouldn’t casually harass his peers.  In grade 10, I insisted that he read aloud to newcomers (which he loved) and tried to cajole an essay out of him (which he hated). Now he’s in grade 12, and during independent reading time he is (still) reading the book he started in grade 9. He claims he’s close to the end. These days, I can only occasionally convince him to come to class – and even then he doesn’t pay much attention.

Today, after a futile hour of explaining that a thesis statement is supposed to be about more than the plot of a story, and insisting that to create an effective thesis statement a person must actually read the story under consideration, I head to my office to grab lunch before my hall duty. In the stairwell, a colleague comments on my obvious exasperation and reminds me that, because of me, this child will (possibly) read one more story than he would have otherwise. He will, at the very least, write a series of (bad) paragraphs that are loosely related to one another. He will know that someone thinks he can do more.

I try to believe this is enough.

I manage a few bites of sandwich before the bell rings, then grab my apple and head into the halls. In the science wing, someone has pulled the handle of the emergency shower, so the floors are flooded. A VP stands amidst the resultant disaster, directing students away from the shimmering water while custodians run the shop vac. Around the corner, a large group of students talks loudly in the new bathroom; I tease that they must be having a bathroom party, and they laugh as they slowly move away. Nearby, a student sits against the lockers, their head tilted back, their eyes closed, creating a moment of peace in the chaos of the school day. A colleague pauses to ask me a question. Behind us, two girls chase each other, screeching, down the hall. 

Outside, the sun beckons. The lawn is dotted with dandelions and dawdling kids. Students fill the basketball courts and the athletic field. The year is so close to an ending that I can almost feel the hallways holding their breath. “Soon,” they whisper, “soon.”

As I walk, I remember the day my mother dropped me off at university. When it was time for her to go, she cried. “I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, not sure if I was comforting her or reassuring myself.

“I know,” she sniffed, “it’s just that I have so much more to teach you.”

She was right, of course, though so was I. My student will manage something, and it will be both enough and not nearly enough. I will put away the Sharpies. The year will end. He will graduate. I will have more to teach him.