Today, I taught a high school classroom for the first time in my life. I wasn’t too shaken up, but it’s obvious that there is a lot of work to be done. Some of my students speak fluently in both English and Spanish, and one even named the skeletal, circulatory, and lymphatic systems from memory in the Living Environments class. On the other end of the spectrum, I had a student come to me after class and say “Hablo en ingles, pero no leo o escribio.” (Her English may be better than my Spanish). Luckily, while that students simply preferred to tell me that in Spanish, she can speak some English. I’m up for the challenge, I think - and it doesn’t hurt that, as of now, I only have 11 students in my ELA class.
I played Tupac Shakur’s “Dear Mama” when introducing my second consequence. When Tupac Amaru Shakur misbehaved, his mother would make him sit and read the newspaper from cover to cover, then she’d quiz him on the stories. One can only imagine what this did for his use of words, attention span, sociopolitical consciousness, and ultimately art (yes, it’s art.). Thus, when my students break the rules twice in a day, they go to the computer, find a news article, and write a two-paragraph brief about it. The first paragraph contains a five-sentence summary; the second, a five-sentence text-to-self, text-to-text, or text-to-world connection. Anyway, it was fun to play the song.
Overall, I am happy with the way things got started. There’s plenty I will do better - tomorrow. But I didn’t expect to be perfect on the first day…
I wish I could write more, but it’s time to LP (lesson plan).
