As Plain As the Nose on My Face

As plain as the nose on my face. The expression has taken on a new meaning for me. Some of the paras would not let the kids touch them. Children are germy creatures. And who says children are not good at sharing? One of my students shared her impetigo with me. Undiagnosed for too long while I tried home remedies, it dug in deep, leaving me easily susceptible to recurring infections that have thankfully dwindled over time.

As plain as the nose on my face. Some days I have to resist the urge to hide. I try not to worry what people might think or how they might react to the horror that is my face. I dress up, hold my head high, put my best foot forward, and fake the confidence I don’t feel. How can I convince my students that it’s what is on the inside that counts if I don’t at least act like I believe it about myself? I hope that my care for others can be as plain as the nose on my face.

As plain as the nose on my face. They said children with autism have trouble expressing emotion, but she wore hers on her face and clothed her whole body in them. Her difficulty communicating with words did not keep people from understanding—if they really wanted to. When she was angry or upset, great storm clouds would gather in her eyes and across her brow. Her body would hum with a violent electricity as she gathered lightning bolts in her fists and the thunder rumbled low in her throat. All it took to calm the rising storm was someone paying attention, listening beyond the words she couldn’t find to speak. And when she felt happy and safe and loved? Who was I to shy away from a slobbery hand on my face that spoke clearer than any words ever could?

As plain as the nose on my face. So many times I sat next to that little boy, listening to him recite all the knowledge he had gleaned from hours of poring over the encyclopedia, understanding the joy and wonder so big and full it had to come spilling out during math practice, reminding him at last to focus—focus, cringing inwardly as he dug deep in his nostrils and then, without pausing, tapped insistently with the same finger on my arm. “Mrs. Bader! Mrs. Bader! Mrs. Bader! Did you know there are 206 bones in the adult human body and more for babies? Wanna hear me name them? Huh?” Always I waited a few beats—until he was back on track with his math facts—before calmly walking to the hand sanitizer and bathing in it with my back turned so he couldn’t see. Next time, I would be faster to remind him of tissues and manners and hygiene. But who was I to trample his joy in knowing things too big and wonderful to contain?

As plain as the nose on my face. The lanky sophomore with stringy hair dyed an impossible shade sits in his desk, legs sprawling outward, head hung down, earbuds silencing the world crowding around him. He comes to class, but he never does the work, rarely speaks to anyone, only reads his favorite book series over and over again. Sometimes I can get him to say a few words to me. Other times he only snarls. I won’t stop trying. For him I will finally read Harry Potter. I don’t need to see his IEP or his 504 to read the anger and depression that are as plain as the nose on my face.

As plain as the nose on my face. She shuffles shyly to her seat, trying to draw as little notice as possible to the growing bump that has replaced the firm, flat belly she so recently flaunted. Some of her classmates already know, others are too lost In their own teenage drama. Last week her boyfriend stopped coming to class. He wasn’t doing his English work, so he might as well get a job to support them all. I hope he will still get his GED. When I get the chance, I ask her about her plans, try to show excitement about a new life rather than expressing judgment over things she can’t undo. I offer encouragement: finish school, you can make it work, I know. Her smile lights up her face and spreads its warmth across the room, plainer than the nose on my face.

Rigormarole*

Before the start of the school year, I attended what can best be described as a staff pep rally at the school where I am doing my student teaching. From my experience as a para-educator and what I’ve seen on You Tube, this is standard practice for most schools, and it isn’t a bad idea. We need to remember our goals and be united in our motivation to pursue them. Two speakers from the district office and several members of the administration spoke to the group gathered in the gym. Along with acknowledging the excitement of starting a new year at a brand new facility and what that indicates about the importance the community places on education, the need for rigor emerged as the unifying theme of the meeting.

Rigor seems to be one of the buzzwords in education lately, and for good reason. Our students deserve a rigorous and thorough education that will help prepare them for whatever futures they decide upon. While we pay lip service to rigor and set up complicated systems of standards and testing and teacher monitoring in the name of achieving it, rigor often eludes our actual practice. There are many reasons for this. Not all students come prepared to the same degree to learn, and, as much as we want a level playing field for all students, achieving an environment and preparing lessons that are equally accessible to all students may not be entirely possible. Yet I wonder if the systems we put in place to ensure rigor are not sometimes at fault.

One of the most unsettling trends I have noticed is the push for quantity of literature to read and writing assignments to complete over quality—all in the name of rigor. Too many teachers feel pressed to cover a specific amount of material by the end of the year or before students encounter it in state testing, which causes them to push through at a rate determined by their calendars and instructional guides rather than what students are able to handle. Students are frequently overwhelmed by this pace and move through lessons, readings, and assignments without understanding, connecting, or retaining, much less mastering the material or making any meaning from it. While an increased number of assignments gives the appearance of holding students to a high standard, this approach amounts to teaching the subject rather than the students. Good teaching practice requires fitting the curriculum and schedule to student needs.

Randy Bomer stresses the importance of writing as a process in Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. In reference to this process he states that “Making quality things . . . is not simply a matter of having high standards; it’s more a matter of strategically lowering one’s standards when it’s time to make a first move, and also being able to raise them progressively across the revision process” (Bomer 204). This approach emphasizes the importance of scaffolding student learning by building on the previously laid foundation and providing plenty of time and opportunity for practicing the skills taught. By shifting the focus from speed and quantity to process and quality, teachers can promote true rigor and purposeful learning that surpasses the ability to churn out shallowly developed essays only good enough to meet the benchmarks on formal assessments.

*This is an intentional misspelling and re-purposing of rigmarole/rigamarole (both correct spellings).

Killing Hope

Please STOP. We all need to STOP. Just cut the foolishness and the drama and the hatred NOW. We are not just hurting ourselves and each other; we are damaging our kids. They see our anger and our ugliness, and they are afraid because we are the adults and we aren't acting like it. We're throwing insults and threatening each other and treating one another exactly opposite of how we've always told them they should treat each other.

I just saw a sophomore in tears because she is so overwhelmed with so much more than her schoolwork and basic teenage concerns. She said she's worried about the election because it's HER future, too, and it isn't only about who wins this election.

"It doesn't matter who they're voting for, I'm tired of seeing everyone fighting." THIS is the future she sees, not the wrong person getting elected but everyone at war with their neighbors, friends, and family.

Do you know what I told her? The same thing I'm going to tell you. It will all be okay, no matter who is elected. Go ahead and repeat that slowly a few times to yourselves.

It. Will. All. Be. Okay.

Some things could get worse. Or they could get better. But we will all make it through the next four years of whichever of these clowns gets elected. Eight if necessary.

So suck it up and quit scaring the kids, please.

Quit scaring yourselves while you're at it.

Stop calling one another names and saying that those voting for the candidate you oppose are committing treason or should be rounded up and incarcerated or deported or shot.

Do you hear yourselves? What would you say to your child if (s)he came home from school and said the same of a classmate with whom (s)he didn't agree? Parents need anti-bullying programs more than children do.

Maybe this is why there have been so many fights at my high school. Perhaps it's part of the reason why kids are shutting down or overwhelmed and breaking down and apathy is on the rise. This is the death of hope in the next generation, and every single one of us who does not do something to stem this tide of hatred is guilty of sticking a knife in that hope and bringing it closer to its ever-quickening demise. WE did that. Are doing it still.

But we can STOP.

We can change. We can love. We can encourage. We can curb our judgments and temper our words with kindness. We can build hope.

Or we can destroy it.

The choice is ours.

2016 KATE Conference

On Thursday and Friday of this week I attended the Kansas Association of Teachers of English (KATE) Conference in Wichita. As excited as I was in the weeks leading up to it, the conference still managed to exceed my expectations. The mutual goal of educating and supporting young people served as the uniting bond, strengthened by a high level of professionalism. These, along with the warmth and openness of all present proved a refreshing tonic after months of slogging through the current social and political climate. This is what people can achieve when they set aside their differences and work together.

One big surprise of the weekend for me was how much I got out of the first keynote address. I have never read any of Bill Konigsburg’s books and doubted if I ever would. There are so many books and just so little time. From what I had heard about this author and his books, I didn’t think this keynote would benefit me much. Dear reader, it is a foolish and dangerous notion to judge that another person has nothing to contribute to your life. Such thinking goes against my core beliefs, yet I sometimes catch myself heading down that treacherous path, and I am thankful for the warning signs and reminders that put me back on track.

During his keynote address, Mr. Konigsburg spoke very honestly about the emotional turmoil he experienced while grappling with his identity as a young gay man. It takes a lot of guts to share such a personal story with a room full of strangers, and I am grateful for his willingness to do so. Although these are experiences I do not share, this perspective increases my ability to empathize with others who may be going through similar trials, and it informs my words and actions so that they can be imbued with greater kindness, gentleness, and care.

Toward the end of his keynote speech, Mr. Konigsburg said something that particularly struck me. He said that someday he hopes to meet a teacher who is “a Christian, a pro-lifer, and who believes being gay is a sin” and that this teacher will save just one kid who is going through what he did by showing that they care. I had hoped that I would have the opportunity to talk with Mr. Konigsburg later in the day and thank him personally for his speech and especially for saying this one thing, but I didn’t see him when there wasn’t a crowd around him. The description may not fit me precisely, but it’s close enough, and I am certain there are quite a few more Christian teachers and student teachers who feel the same way. It is possible to love and support people individually without agreeing with them on everything.  I think the world has forgotten that. It’s time we remembered.

There are so many more things I learned this week. I am still trying to digest it all. Several of the breakout sessions as well as the Thursday lunch keynote speech and the Friday lunch panel dealt with diversity and inclusiveness. All of these fit very well with my own presentation on teaching social justice, and several others offered ideas I would like to incorporate into my teaching on this theme. Kevin Rabas’ Thursday presentation on ekphrastic poetry, poetry in response to art, gave me a specific way to use the art I had been thinking of pairing with some of the written texts I’m considering, and I added this idea to my own presentation on Friday.

Above all, the collegiality at this conference made it such a wonderful experience and really helped build my vision for teaching as a member of this community of teachers and also for working within our individual schools and communities. I am truly blessed to be part of such an amazing group of student teachers who add such depth and richness to my life and my understanding of it. The opportunity to glean from the experience of seasoned teachers already in the field has been priceless, too. My biggest take away from the conference was that together, with love, we can do great things.

Incorporating Art Into a Unit on Social Justice

Below is a list of artworks, artists, and links to include in a unit on social justice. I'd love to add your recommendations to the list!

·      Photography of Dorothea Lange – Depression Era, poverty, migrant workers, Japanese internment camps

·      Guernica – Pablo Picasso (protest against bombing of a village in Spain)

·      The Third of May 1808 and The Disasters of War series – Francisco de Goya

·      The Raft of the Medusa – Theodore Géricault

·      The Uprising – Diego Rivera

·      Self Portrait Along the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States – Frida Kahlo

·      The Prison Courtyard – Vincent van Gogh

·      The Problem We All Live With and Southern Justice – Norman Rockwell

·      Roger Shimomura – works on racism, Japanese internment, identity, culture

·      Liberty Leading the People – Eugene Delacroix

·      Flower Sellers of London and London – Gustave Doré

·      Art of Käthe Kollwitz

·      http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1678584_1477732,00.html

·      http://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/36-thought-provoking-paintings-pawel-kuczynski/

·      http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/banksy%E2%80%99s-10-most-powerful-works-social-commentary

·      https://nladesignvisual.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/willie-bester-1956/

·      http://www.boredpanda.com/powerful-social-advertisements/

·      http://www.boredpanda.com/collage-art-social-issues-joe-webb/

·      https://amandalouisesummerscales.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/artists-research/ (domestic violence)

·      Nicolas Lampert, A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements (New York, The New Press, 2013)

·      http://www.nicolaslampert.org/ - Pages on community art, art activism, art focused on social justice and ecology

·      http://urfaim.blogspot.com/2009/06/peoples-media-case-study-on-art-of.html (The art of Emory Douglas for the Black Panther Party)

·      https://www.pinterest.com/explore/political-art/

·      http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/

Poems About Social Justice/Social Issues

I will continue adding to this list as I find new poems. Please leave any recommendations you have in the comments below so I can add them.

·      Langston Hughes

o   “Harlem” (“Dream Deferred”) – “I, Too” – “Let America Be America Again” - “The Weary Blues” – “Theme for English B” – “Madam and the Charity Child” – “Mother to Son” – “Out of Work” – “The Ballad of the Landlord”

·      Countee Cullen

o   “Incident” – “Thoughts in a Zoo” – “Tableau” – “I Have a Rendezvous With Life” – “Uncle Jim” – “Saturday’s Child”

·      Maya Angelou

o   “Still I Rise” – “In All Ways a Woman” – “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” – “On the Pulse of the Morning”

·      Paul Laurence Dunbar

o   “We Wear the Mask” – “Sympathy”

·      Alfred, Lord Tennyson

o   “The Charge of the Light Brigade”

·      Rudyard Kipling

o   “The Last of the Light Brigade” – “Justice”

·      William Blake

o   “The Chimney Sweeper” (from Songs of Innocence) – “The Chimney Sweeper” (from Songs of Experience)

·      Jacqueline Woodson – various poems from Brown Girl Dreaming

·      Robert Frost

o   “Mending Wall”

·      Yusef Komunyakaa

o   “Ghazal, After Ferguson”

·      Ailish Hopper

o   “Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love?”

·      Tony Hoagland

o   “America

·      Chase Twichell

o   “Corporate Geese” – “Negligent Worldicide”

·      Robinson Jeffers

o   “The Answer” – “The Purse-Seine”

·      Richard Michelson

o   “Counting to Six Million”

·      Nikki Giovanni

o   “The Song of the Feet”

·       

While You Were Sleeping (Creative Reflection #1)

While You Were Sleeping,

We discussed the novel:

Broad themes, finer points,

Literary devices,

Plot structure,

Character analysis,

The author’s redress of the

“Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope,

And the dark side of

Young adult lit.

We left the classroom

Went Looking for Alaska,

Wandered the Labyrinth,

Sought a Great Perhaps,

Spoke of life and death and

The depression that can

Swallow the one to

Spit it out as the other.

When still you did not stir

For that oh-so salacious scene

The “good” stuff they say teens want—

“Raw, honest, real,”

I leaned in and listened

To hear you breathe.

A slim, glistening thread

Coupling lip to desk

Quivered and broke as you

Sleepily sighed,

Stopping me short

Of checking your pulse.

And then the bell sounded,

Instantly sending you upright

And out the door,

As if you had never

Suffered an English-induced

Coma,

As if you had never been

Engaged.

Who Are You? I Really Wanna Know.

With the first month of school behind us, I’ve begun to settle into my school placement. I have memorized the names of all the students in the two classes I’m observing as well as a few in the classes before and after, but I occasionally check the seating chart just to be sure. During my second week I called a student by the wrong name, and I don’t want to make that mistake again. On the seating chart I’ve also written the pronunciation of names that are less familiar to me along with the preferred names of some students. The names and titles we use hold special significance; they identify us as separate and distinct individuals as well as members of families or other groups, and they represent who we are to other people.

One of the most basic human desires is to know and to be known. This is the basis of all our relationships. It’s how we build trust and friendship and love. Taking the time to learn students’ names or the names they prefer to be called is a first step in developing a relationship with them and letting them know that I respect and care about them as individuals. This in turn helps students to feel secure in their developing sense of self.

Learning names and addressing students by them is the first step toward knowing who they are, but there is so much more to learn so that I can successfully individualize instruction to maximize learning for all students. In Teaching English by Design, Peter Smagorinsky recommends using writing assignments and questionnaires as inventories of students’ interests, knowledge, skills, experiences, and goals in order to tailor instruction for both individuals and groups (113).

My mentor teacher conducts just such an inventory at the start of the year via a short unit that also encourages the students to engage in self-reflection and assessment. Students begin by reading Who Moved My Cheese for Teens by Dr. Spencer Johnson (original version PDF here), a fable about motivation and how to handle changes. Next they take a Meyers Briggs type personality test and a learning styles quiz. At the end of the unit students write an essay explaining what they learned about themselves from these three sources, and this essay serves as an inventory of their writing skills. Information gathered from this unit combined with the info graphics students created to introduce themselves during the first week of class provide a rough sketch of who these students are as individuals and what needs they have.

 This is a good starting point for designing curriculum and tailoring lessons, but great educators teach people rather than content. Our students are not flat characters in the story of their own lives, nor should they be in ours. As I explained to the juniors last week in a lesson on character analysis, round characters are like both onions and ogres; they have layers. Our students, too, are deep, multi-layered, complex, and unique. Each deserves to be fully rounded, a star player in our classrooms as well as outside of them. 

Do you see your students as round characters like Shrek or flat like Gingy?

To me, the best stories are those that have the greatest number of interesting characters for the plot to revolve around. How blessed I am to add 57 fully rounded, multilayered characters to my life story this semester! I must admit, however, that I’m also grateful not to have the 121 more I will have next semester just yet. I need time to learn how to peel back those layers and to keep track of all of the characters before the plot thickens!

One thing I have started that should prove helpful in getting to know students is making notes each day in my planner. In the school agenda that my mentor teacher gave me, I write a brief outline of the lesson and activities for each day along with notes about issues that arise with individual students or questions I have about how to better help them. These notes serve as a reminder of things I may want to research at home like strategies for working with ESL students or situations I want to pray about. To ensure the privacy of students, I use first name initials only and keep notes that will jog my memory rather than giving a full description. Since I often write as a way of working through problems, I may reflect in a private journal at home, adding more detail and questions in order to help me chart patterns and progress and brainstorm new ways of handling situations. Whether students struggle with the material being taught, the skills required, or with behavior and attitude, this type of reflection that considers the whole person helps me look past how the problem presents itself in the moment, which can assist me in getting to the heart of the matter and working toward more lasting results.

Rather than writing only about problems students are having, I try to make note of their strengths and interests and to engage them in conversation about these when appropriate. I use the time before the bell rings at the start of class or after they have put their laptops away before dismissal to chat with students using their own discussions, a book they have with them, a band T-shirt, or other clues as a way into conversation with them. Already I have recommendations for several books, and I've listened to all of the favorite songs listed on the junior class info graphics. Knowing who these students are connects me with them personally, and it also helps me to connect them with the skills and material they need to learn. Beyond that, I find that knowing these students and engaging in an interchange of ideas with them enriches my life as much as I hope it does theirs.
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Johnson, Spencer. Who Moved My Cheese? for Teens: An A-mazing Way to Change and 

     Win! New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2002. Print.

Smagorinsky, Peter. Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry out 

     Instructional Units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008. Print.

Engaging Students Under Pressure

Students face the new school year with their own special blend of excitement and apprehension. Each year of high school brings them closer to the enormous change of passing from childhood into the adult world, and, as much as they crave independence, they know it comes at the price of increased responsibility. 

Dear reader, do you remember the immense and crushing weight of that impending responsibility pushing downward and inward on you until you felt you might crumple? Do you remember the equal force of your desire to break free and become your own person, a need continually expanding, testing your capacity to contain it until you felt certain you would explode? Perhaps you felt the vast and looming “terror of knowing” or not knowing “what this world is about” (Mercury, Bowie et al.). 

I want to break free!

 And then prom comes and everyone's singing, 
"This is our last dance, this is our last dance . . ."




Do you remember? This girl does. That's me below, in the middle, high school graduation, May of 19nevermind, pondering Mercury/Bowie, MacNeice, and the meaning of life.

"Oh, $#%+! What now?"

Students today face the same pressure and uncertainty. Most of them feel they are ill equipped for what lies ahead, and I fear too many are right. Our job as educators is to prepare them, yet we often doubt whether we are equal to this task. In addition to language barriers and learning disabilities, many of our students come to us with problems that, while unrelated to school, affect their readiness to learn. A quick look at the info graphics the sophomores and juniors created for their first assignment tells me that at least two of them have children of their own. A number of these students have documented problems with self-doubt, anxiety, anger, and depression. Most of them have jobs after school and on weekends, some to help support themselves and their younger siblings. In the face of so many competing problems and pressures, how can we engage students in learning so that they leave our classrooms ready for the world that awaits them?

One obstacle to engaging students is proving to them the value of the work we require them to do. Surely you remember this as well. It is the same for college students. English education majors complain about the need for a statistics class while all other education majors bemoan the requirement of passing linguistics. Teacher candidates should be forced to take a vow that they will always remember the trials and tribulations of their own time as students and strive to provide content with more apparent relevance and real world application. But what does that look like in practical terms? Most educators choose to teach a subject they already find relevant and interesting. How can we help students to see it as such?

As I continue to develop my ideas for using social justice as an overall focus in my classroom, I have been reading numerous books and articles on the subject, and a common thread in the majority of directing student work toward authentic purposes and authentic audiences. The framework I am reading about and envision for my own classroom allows students to choose the issues or causes that interest them and then focus their academic work on drawing awareness to those issues and finding solutions. Rather than writing for a grade or for the teacher, students do work they care about, others outside the classroom see their work (which often increases effort), and their work matters: relevance.

Randy Bomer addresses the topics of student engagement and relevance from the outset in his book Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. He speaks of students “developing habits of engaging—ways of becoming involved and invested in literate tasks that are significant to them” . . . “because of the ways the literate activity connects to other things in life that matter to them” (3). Bomer concludes, “English should, instead [of being about the isolated study of literature], become about reading and writing lives, about participation in literate communities within the classroom and beyond its door” (9).  Jessica Singer Early expresses a similar goal in Stirring Up Justice: Writing and Reading to Change the World. In this slim volume Early describes lessons in which “students use reading and writing to learn about and participate as agents of change” (1).  The result is a high-interest curriculum that engages students, connects learning inside the classroom with life outside of school, motivates continued learning and action, and teaches skills that remain useful beyond high school or college graduation.

Most importantly, a focus on engagement, relevance, and real world application empowers students and equips them to succeed in life. It addresses the needs of the whole person across a the span of a lifetime rather than presenting education as a series of hurdles in a brief race to graduation with no track career beyond or further need to run.

As much as I enjoy dreaming up ideas for my own classroom, I want to begin helping students understand the value, relevance, and application for their learning right now in my student teaching. I am so privileged to work with this group of young people and to help them be and feel adequately prepared for life beyond high school.

References:

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms.         

               Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011. Print.

Singer, Jessica. Stirring up Justice: Writing and Reading to Change the World.       

               Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann, 2006. Print.

Ah, the final days of August! As the heat of summer burns out its intensity in a last ditch effort to remind us that fall has not quite arrived, students throughout the nation wave a tearful goodbye to months of leisure. Children, your “freedom as free lances/Advances towards its end.” The sky is still good for flying, however, and you are not dying, children, not dying![1] As one season ends, so another begins, each bringing new promise, new tasks, and new challenges. And, honestly, is there anything better than the smell of new books and freshly sharpened pencils? Oh how I love this time of year!

This year I welcome the start of school with even more than my usual excitement as I begin my student teaching. So far I have had several chances to meet with my mentor teacher and help set up the classroom, attended two orientations and training over the Marzano teacher evaluation system, met all of the students I will be working with next semester, and attended the first regular class for each of the two classes I am observing this semester. I am thankful to have a veteran mentor teacher who is very welcoming and easy to talk to. Although we have a number of things in common, we are also very different, particularly in teaching and classroom management style, and I think I will learn a lot from her.

As I look out on the start of this fresh new year, I see so much potential to learn, to serve, and to make a difference. In order to make the most of my time and squeeze as much potential out of this year as possible, I need to plan and track my own growth. By evaluating my strengths, weaknesses, and the overall vision I have for teaching, I have identified the following goals for the year.

·      Present at the KATE Conference in October – This is a terrifying prospect for me, which tells me I definitely need to submit a proposal and (if accepted) follow through.

·      Continue to find resources and develop plans for the social justice focus I would like to use in my own classroom – Preparing for the KATE Conference and for my teaching unit will help with this goal.

·      Learn to put my big ideas into detailed, specific, and easily understood lesson plans that work with students – I need to learn how to do this in a way that I can manage on a regular basis without all the overthinking, over researching, and major stressing.

·      Learn and establish good methods, habits, and routines for daily practice

·      Learn and practice effective classroom management – I hate to call it classroom discipline because I want to give students as much autonomy as possible, but I know there will be times that I have to enforce rules or address student behavior. I want to learn how to act authoritatively without being authoritarian. I have a soft spot for those “problem” kids. I know I need to learn how to work with them without letting them walk all over me. My mentor teacher has indicated that she is more of a disciplinarian, so this is one area where I should be able to learn a lot from her.

It’s not a long list, but looks to be both challenging and manageable. Here’s to new beginnings, fresh starts, and another season for growth! Happy new school year!

---

[1] I have purposefully misappropriated lines from Louis MacNeice’s poem “Sunlight on the Garden,” which is not at all about going back to school, but it is a very good poem that often pops into my mind. If you’ve never read it, you should; and if you have read it, you should read it again.