Today Was a Good Day

I had to write an essay for my ED526A class about something that happened in school this week. Here's what I wrote:



I’m glad that you asked me to write about something that happened in school this week. Today I had an awesome experience with my students. In general, my 5th period class is a piece of work. My students are all sorts of adorable and funny and endearing, but they don’t know how to behave to save their lives. I end that class most days thinking that “teaching” is a pretty strong word to use for what happens in room 423.

One of the main problems I have with my 5th period—apart from it being a class of ADD/ADHD students right after lunch—is that it’s hard to find that spark in them. They’ll sit in class and (sometimes) pretend to care about what I’m saying, but they don’t relate the curriculum to their lives. But today I got to see my students become mentally and emotionally involved in my lesson!

The other day I bought the documentary Invisible Children, mostly because I’m a documentary nerd, but also in the hopes that my children would be captivated by the story. Watching the movie with my students was my favorite class moment of the year. They originally were excited to watch it because it had kids holding AK-47’s, and they originally thought it was a movie about Haiti, and they originally thought that was all there was to it. As the movie continued I watched my room grow silent, I watched my students move to the front to see clearly, I watched my students hush each other and warn one student not to laugh at the images, and I watched my usually rowdy students become focused and somber. Throughout the movie they made comments about it making them sad and making their stomachs hurt. One student asked me why we didn’t bring the children from Uganda to America. Another asked me why we weren’t giving Uganda money if we were giving it to Haiti. Another said that he thought every student at Vaux should have to see it.

Today I was really proud of my students for sitting still, paying attention and, overall, acting like normal human beings. But what I was really proud of was that they stepped away from their own lives to learn about other people in another place. I saw them actually want to learn about something. And I saw them articulate what they learned and how it affected them with more ease and power than most (fully literate) academics. Today ruled.