The Average Classroom

It's cold and Friday. In 7th grade, this means education is at least a double digit underdog.

Today I handed out copies of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Today, we're learning about author's purpose and viewpoint. All my students have, by either some form of learning or prolonged osmosis of their histories, learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and all of them are familiar with his famous dream.

This is what happens when you give a class copies of those resonant, powerful words.

First, the student in the front will collect his four sheets and pass them back. This is not always consistent though. Every other row or so, one student will decide to dangle the sheet in front of the student behind him, only to yank it away at the last second. The chances of this happening doubles if the students are of a different gender.

Actually, it triples.

Secondly, some students will purposely drop their papers, letting them scatter to the floor. They will look embarrassed, but in reality they are quite happy for the hard-earned collection of seconds to get out of their seats and not have to be in them.

Once all students are appropriately situated with their speeches, some will have them upside down.

Once all students are appropriately situated with their speeches and properly aligned, the lesson can start. The teacher can say something remarkably insightful and even eloquent (depending on who is listening), for instance: "I know that living in Prince George's County, which is the largest predominantly African American county in the entire country, it's easy to hear about figures in black history like Martin Luther King, Jr. I wanted, though, to not just tell you about how great black men like him ended segregation, but I wanted to be sure that you not only understood who he was, but I want you to leave this classroom being able to understand what he said--how he thought, what he wrote, and why it was that when words came out of this man's mouth, people listened as if it was thunder. I want you to know what it looks like when words become power."

At this point, these things are going on, all simultaneously, and very few of them involve listening:

Some students will be slightly entranced because when a teacher speaks for more than 2 minutes, they are familiar with feigning attention and letting their mind wander.

Some students will be looking out of the corner of their eyes, trying to catch the corner of another student's eye, hoping that they can give a quick middle finger before the teacher turns towards that side of the room.

Several will be doing something utterly ridiculous. For example, one will be using his keys to maniacally lash at his forearm with a contorted expression on his face, hoping that someone will witness this and think it absurdly hilarious.

About two will be ready to read the first paragraph once the teacher begins.

Some will be looking at the clock and realize to their dismay that it is not yet lunch.

Some will be holding pencils in their hand ready to underline whatever the teacher tells them to underline because they have read handouts before and that is what they have done before so they have their pencils sharpened and ready and they are ready to do as they are told.

Many will be asking for pencils.

The remaining will be asking to have them sharpened.

Some will have already begun their 72 minute long quest to fill the handout with doodles and their esoteric conceptions of geometry--and some, if they are truly good at this, have already filled in all the enclosed white space created by the letters within the first paragraph. To illustrate--this means all letters that somehow create a bubble of white space will have these said bubbles darkened in with pencil lead or blue or black or red ink. Examples of these letters are a, b, and d and so on and so forth but not c, i, and k and so on and so forth.

Some will have their heads down.

Three will be rolling their eyes.

Two will be asleep.

Some will be whispering to their neighbor, thinking that they are being too quiet to be heard.

Some will be talking to their neighbor, completely unconcerned that they are being heard.

A couple will be grumbling at the prospect of work.

Some will be throwing paper balls, rubber bands, anything--today, in fact, a shard of a Pop Tart--across the room.

And today, one, her eyes glowing like curiosity, held the xeroxed paper in her hand and asked, earnest as the world and her eyes like stars or if not, then something else significantly bright and remarkable in their clarity, held the photocopy in her hand and asked, with the reverent tone of a supplicant who has been granted an answer that she cannot quite decipher but at a very conscious level, knows is imperatively and thrillingly relevant and crucially pivotal to her place and position in all of history and its consequence, she held that sheet of paper in her hand and asked, with what I think I detected was a blend of muted awe and realization that gratitude, in this moment, before these words, would be apropos.

"Can I keep this?"

The Bar

It's January 19th, which means that it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Which means schools are closed. Which means across the country, teachers are relieved. And I think at this point, I can safely say that if you want to quantify teacher happiness relative to student happiness on a day off, it would be the positive quadrant of a parabola.

But school resumes on Wednesday, so I figure after MLK day and the inauguration on the 20th, this is a uniquely appropriate time in history to teach about Martin Luther King Jr. My students know surprisingly little about him, but I guess they know about as much as I did when I was in 7th grade--that he was a really famous black guy who gave a speech about a dream and somehow, he magically brought white and black people together so that they could finally hold hands and smile.

So I looked up his "I Have a Dream" speech online, and after reading it, I know one thing for sure.

Martin uses some big words.

Lesson planning is weird. There are, however, 3 basic rules that pretty much happen every time:
1. No writing actually begins without the requisite 4 hours of dread staring at a blank page.
2. No writing takes place without wishing you did it yesterday.
3. In general, lesson plans become more economical with words as the week progresses. In other words, the word count of Friday's plan is inversely proportional to the word count of Monday's.

But Martin uses some fancy words. Which is a problem because reading through fancy words involves a lot of fancy reading. This is tough to do as a class because when you stop every third word to define it, this causes boredom and sometimes chaos and if chaos, then sometimes, an ulcer.

So I went through and thought of what I could do. I thought about changing some of the words and just as I was about to substitute "chain" for "manacle," I felt a little sacrilegious so I stopped. I thought about finding another article, but at this point, I'd been staring at that blank page for just about 4 hours, so it was too late to turn back.

They say kids will only meet whatever expectations you set for them. This is true, except for a few circumstances, such as organic chemistry, but that's only because science happens to be really really hard.

So on Wednesday, we are going to learn what a manacle is, we are going to understand segregation, we are going to need to define prosperity, we are going to dramatize the word dramatize to understand the word dramatize, we are going to learn the meaning of degenerate (and hopefully use it towards each other just a few times), all the while hopefully preserving our dignity--even if we yes, languish, doing it.

And we're going to try to figure out what Martin's purpose for all this rhetoric was in the first place.

Because if kids do indeed only rise as far as the standard that is set for them, then I suppose the common sense conclusion is to set it as audaciously high and terrifyingly daring as humanly possible.