One thing that I always find difficult is to somehow write something worth saying on a topic I don’t have a lot to write about. One way that can be avoided is by knowing something about what I’m writing about. I have a problem with that sometimes. If I don’t already know something going into a paper, or don’t find the readings interesting I can’t seem to bring myself to do the kind of research necessary to actually have something to say on a topic. I’m sure that there are ways around this besides just sucking it up, but I have to find some sort of motivation to either find those tactics or find the interesting pieces to read, and the problem really comes down to motivation anyway, right?

This is a problem that I would love to be able to avoid with my students, but don’t see any simple way to do so. Maybe by keeping this sort of thing in mind over the next semester in which I will undoubtedly have several papers to write I will be able to find some sort of strategy to share with students.

Honesty

One thing that I remember thinking a lot in high school is, “Why do I have to know this? When will I ever use this?” I hope to have the sort of classroom in which students don’t have to ask those questions because I make it clear to them how the material will benefit their future. While it may not be the easiest thing to do in an English classroom, I do believe that it can be done. Part of this I believe is being honest with students in the fact that as far as essays are concerned, they probably won’t be using those skills in the future. Instead the part that they are learning is the art of learning. That is to say that they are learning how to be prepared for the challenges that they will be facing in their inevitable careers that they probably won’t like anyway. \\

Or maybe I’ll be honest with them and say that in high school they aren’t really learning anything other than how to get through college, and in college they will be learning things that are relevant to life after school. (I don’t believe in the idea of “The Real World”.)

One thing that I always wondered in high school was why I had to do things that my teachers didn’t have to do. This mostly applied to my PE classes because in the rest they kind of did have to do what we were about to do in order to show us how. I hate the idea of my students thinking that I’m wasting their time on something that I would never do myself though, so I think that when I ask them to write a weekly blog, I will do the same. A public blog for my classroom that allows them to see that I’m doing the same activity. I’m sure that it will take some learning of how to walk the fine line of appropriate, but I have faith that I will be able to find a way to write about what I’m learning and what I’m wanting to teach without slipping too much.

I think I’ll also challenge myself to join my students in writing one of the assignments that I give to them each semester. Perhaps I will even let them decide somehow which one I do. By doing something like this I will have to keep on the same timeline as I expect them to do, and I will have a working example for them to use that I haven’t gotten sick of reading over for the last several semesters. I will however remind them that for each paper they write I will have 30 or so to read, so doing all of the papers with them is not an option. Perhaps my willingness to join them in the seemingly mundane tasks will give students a different perspective on the typical, “I’m the teacher so do it” tone that some teachers have.

I expect that this may also give me some good perspective on just what exactly I am asking of my students. If something is too difficult for me to pull off, why is it that way, and are students facing the same sort of challenges? Maybe that assignment will have to be modified to be either longer or more accommodating.

I have been really bad about journaling this second half of the semester, which probably isn’t the best thing when one of the writing prompts I have written for class and very much intend to use when I have my own classroom is a weekly blog. How can I actually expect my students to write once a week when I can’t seem to do the same when it’s assigned to me?

I really do believe that writing consistently is the best way to improve one’s writing and learn what does and does not work for an individual style, yet I’ve let other homework and other stresses get in the way of a simple 10 minutes a day that is all it takes to keep active in writing.

Since I’ve been so lax about it this semester I have decided to challenge myself to sit down twice a day to write for at least 10 minutes. This will not only help me to finish the assigned journal entries, but also get something worthwhile up on my personal blog, get me to write regularly again and help me to understand more what I’ll be asking my students to do!

Overloaded

Ok, so my barrage of posts right before the first round was due seems to have left me a little bit dry.

In my time away I've been very overwhelmed with schoolwork. Apparently it's not recommended to take both 125A and 125B in the same semester. I did not know this before, and I completely understand it now. Though, it would be a lot easier to handle without a certain selection of any of my other classes right now.

It's got me thinking about high school, and how teachers semi-coordinate their assignment schedules in high school to avoid overloading students with too many big projects all due at once. While I appreciated the efforts while in school and having less homework to ignore at any one time, I'm now wondering if it does some harm as a manner of college prep.

For the students who actually did their homework and got used to a sort of even work load, how are they supposed to deal with midterms and essays all being due within two weeks? Especially for those who are working full time and dealing with other things that high schoolers often don't have to think about at all.

I do like the idea, but think that maybe it should be done in moderation, maybe only in the first half of the year. That way, student can get a taste of the insanity that they're going to be facing in only a few more years. Every high school is a college prep school now, right?

Taking my own Advice

It’s not until now, less then an hour before this first batch is due, while I’m finally putting them all together in a Word document that I noticed my suggestion to myself in the very first entry.

I’m starting to think that it’s kind of a good thing that I’m such a scattered student right now. This should allow me to be my own best teacher in managing to get a student back on track. I mean, if I write things down for myself and then don’t follow them, I really can’t expect anyone else to follow them either.

So the next round of these should be a bit different than this first one has been. I’m going to start trying to make time to do everything in a way that I can be proud of. While there have been times that I’ve wanted to focus more on being funny and having people come back because they enjoy reading this blog, the good writing should follow if I’m paying enough attention to what it is that I’m saying. Heck, I might even find a way to be funny while saying something worthwhile!

I hope that the lesson I learn from this isn’t so much how I work best, but to really teach myself that people need to find their own best practices and go with that. My biggest problem with high school was that my teachers always seemed to expect me to do things their way rather than my own, when I could have given them a much better product had I been allowed a little wiggle room. With a little luck, I’ll really be able to learn that for my own students.

Procrastination

Now that I’m less than two hours before the first batch of these journals are due, I’m glad that I had this blog to be keeping up with them. Sure, I’ve already written two today, and after I finish this third one I’ve got one last one to go, but that’s still a whole lot better than I know I would have done without the blog. This brings up a good point when dealing with students. While I would love to have been totally different than most students, I know that in the issue of procrastination, I am not. If we give students any amount of time to complete an assignment, they will wait until the last minute because they have things to do that are not only more interesting, but more important to them.

So how does one little teacher find a way to get students to give the sort of attention to their work that it deserves? Especially a teacher who doesn’t always do that for her own work!

I have no answer to that question. Maybe using blogs in the way that I’m doing is one way to help with it, maybe there will be some other huge breakthrough I have while actually in the classroom. Maybe I’ll simply get an awesome group of students who want to do their work and won’t trouble me at all!

Hey, I can dream, right?