Moving On

From my several week hiatus of sharing some information and notes I have observed from school, I thought I would start with my most recent visit: this morning. I suppose what I gathered from today's experience was dealing with the population of teenagers. So skip the part of the morning where I woke up late, couldn't find the right shoes, and had to get my car jump started because my battery was dead. I came in to the classroom in the middle of the senior English class taking their final on MacBeth. The final was in depth, and large, a fact the entire class made vocal to the same old tune of the teenage whine. Although this may seem harsh to the general class, my teacher later told me they simply do not know how to take finals. Four years ago, as a general student myself, I would have resented this type of teacher, but hindsight is 20/20. I wish I had teachers that slammed me with in depth exams that made me show thorough knowledge of literature we had read. Not only would it have prepared me for exams in college, it would have made me remember literature better. Let's face it. Not every student wants to go on to college. There is still a lot to be learned from literature about life and the world.

Senior seminar was canceled, in planning I began looking at Frankenstein because they are moving on to a Romantic unit in a few weeks. I found out that these students still do portfolios, although I'm not sure to what level, so next week will be geared toward writing. Then they move on to a Puritan unit, before finishing off the semester with Romanticism. I have hope that I will get to teach a lesson with the Puritan unit so to the "Loss of Paradise," I turn to for that!

I watched a beginning Theatre class rehearse a parody of "Maceth." As my profile states I am a part time Theatre teacher to small children, some of whom also come to the acting school with no theatre experience. Thus I made sure to be as supportive as possible, although I could not help but also note the same un-enthusiasm as the first class. As a whole, the students did not want to be there.

I also wanted to comment on the restricted AP class. The assignment was for the students to find a scholarly article backing up a theory that Shakespeare was actually someone else from the Elizabethan time (like Francis Bacon, Edward De Vere,& Christopher Marlowe). They went to the computer lab, I got my iPad ready to help research, and Ebscohost was down. It could have been the rain. It could be the stress. But the class seemed to be ruined. Some students were panicking, a few students tried search engines, but for the most part they gave up. Then, of course, it was picture day and so that took some time away from their research too.

I know, I know. This is what school is sometimes. But the pressure to make every moment in school as productive as possible towards the higher goal of giving the gift of education has been ground in me the past three years can really change a person. I watched my teacher supervisor's reaction. She stayed calm, down to earth, and just rolled with the punches. Sure, her classes had a less-than-enthusiastic students, but she always stayed focused on moving forward. On top of that the students never backlashed when she tried to help each student, kept the play going, even when student broke character to go take a picture, and she told them to stop whining about their assignments. My lesson for today was to accept the times when the other million things that happen at school happen to accept, and move on.