The Experienced Teacher #SOLC26 2/31

Lately, I’ve been feeling my age as a teacher. Look, I don’t think I’m old, exactly, but I’m definitely much nearer the end of my teaching career than the beginning. I’m literally the same age as the mother of one of my colleagues. I try not to think about it, but it’s still out there. I’ve given up on some things – I no longer even bother pretending to keep up with celebrities and slang. I pick up a bit here & there, toss it into the occasional class discussion and pray I’m only a bit out of date. Is skibidi still a thing? Six-seven? Ariana Grande? Who knows? Who cares? Not me, honestly.

As a Department Head, I pride myself on encouraging teachers in the department to try new things, take risks, see if we can meet students where they are and all of that, but too often I still think of new things as, you know, books. Meanwhile, my colleagues are tiptoeing into the world of teaching video games and YouTube essays. They use reels and bring up streamers (who are people, not party decorations). It’s impressive, and I kind of hope I retire before I need to use these things regularly. I mean, I keep a blog – which I write without AI. 

Which brings me to one of my grade 9 classes this year. They are energetic and hilarious, which translates into “always talking” and “often sneaking out their phones.” They don’t read and they don’t do homework. (Obviously some of them do, but classes have personalities and this one is, ahem, riotous.)

It’s a year-long class that meets every other day, so February marked the beginning of our second semester together, and last week marked the end of my patience. People were late. People were talking. We’d given up independent reading time several weeks ago. On this day, notebooks were not out; no one had a pencil; only two students had completed the article of the week. Their midterm marks were atrocious, but they didn’t seem to care about improving. I gave up. I asked the students to sit in a circle and I spoke to them honestly. I didn’t know what we were going to  do, but it couldn’t be this. We would not make it to the end of the school year. “So,” I said, “too hard, too easy or too boring?”

The answer, of course, was yes, though it took a while for them to trust me enough to talk about it. Once we had established that, we moved to the next question. “What do you want or need to make this class better?”

“More fun,” they said. (Well, after they said no reading and no writing, no vocabulary and no sitting and all group work and let them use their phones – and I laughed and laughed.)

“What does fun look like?”

No one really knew at first, but slowly they came to agreement: they wanted to read something together, maybe out loud and definitely not on their own; they wanted to move around more; they wanted to work with other people, even though they know they’re not really good at actually working in groups. They wanted more support for their writing.

“Ok,” I rubbed my hands together. “I can do that! Let’s choose a book!”

And, because I am old and I am a Department Head, I know who teaches what and when, so I went to the book room (don’t worry; another teacher stayed in the room with them), and I grabbed a few copies of every book that had a full class set. I found seriously old books (Lord of the Flies) and slightly old books (Speak) and modern books (Frying Plantain) and brought back enough copies for people to page through. Still, nothing was really hitting them.

Finally, R looked up and said, “You know, I thought in high school we would read Shakespeare.” Several others agreed with her. “Could we read Romeo and Juliet?” Across the room, some of the boys perked up, too. They were down with Shakespeare.

Y’all. Shakespeare? I hadn’t even considered Shakespeare. These kids are from all over the world. Their English is everything from native to fluent to okay to, well, we’re trying. Some of them are excellent readers; some are decidedly not. They generally disdain English class. Shakespeare? Perfect!

Experience has its privileges: I know that the language will be hard enough that it will equalize the class – all the readers will struggle with the words. I know that this is as much a gang story as it is a love story. I know that we will be on our feet all the time and that they will have to work together and do close reading to figure out what in the world is going on. I know that I have myriad options to support kids at different levels and I know that this will work. I know it right away. 

“Yes!” I said. “Let’s do it! This is going to be fun!”

I put all the other books away and gathered the students in for a second time that class period to talk about feuds and families and sneaking out of your house. I may be old, but when it comes to teaching, I like to think that experience means I know what I’m doing.