When I was forming my end of the year surveys, I knew it would be a difficult experience to read the feedback the students gave to me. Growth doesn't begin to describe this year. From naive to mousy to raging to stern to uncertain to confident to silly to... well, more on that later-- from all these changes there has come a quite nice rhythm, each day, each week, each unit. I don't have to be the same every day. Good teaching doesn't look the same every day. Good studenting doesn't look the same every day. You could excise a two-week slice of our the life in our classroom and see everything from active test monitoring to frenetic finger painting to peer-editing cross-cultural communication journals to off-the-cuff fishbowls on whether justice can even consider the implications of race. What would students say?
Cowardice has kept me from looking over them all yet, but from what I've read so far, students are far more incisive than I might have hoped for. They sense the growth, the increased ease, if not continual ease, then the ability and knowing when to fall into it.
So I've come to brood over how to know what a good day looks like, sounds like, feels like. For them, for me, for our entire biosphere. What weather should I be dressing for?
I still don't know. To be honest, I'm still not sure what weather I'm hoping for. Maybe it's too difficult to decide just now, this early on in teacher-life, despite the management and pedagogy books' exhorting, maybe it's better to be a little flexible, a little open, a little prepared for it all. An umbrella in the trunk, dressing in layers, willing to receive whatever the day brings.
A steady, grateful face turned to the sun and the raindrops alike, maybe that's what it takes to live in this little world of the classroom.
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