I am intensely proud of my 8th grade students this week.
They have worked so hard this month and yesterday I witnessed success happening for them. It was so, so beautiful to me, and something I experienced alone but want to share with everyone.
I have required that they learn and recite the presidents in order. When I said it in December, they were definitely surprised. I think I was surprised too, but we were doing this. I thought about it, and realized that there's so much value in it, and it pushed them. It pushed me too.
It made me think of the reverence I was hoping for yesterday when reflecting on Anne Lamott's good advice about looking around.
"...of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds. When this happens, everything feels more spacious."
'There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in
all of creation."
Yesterday I did feel Wordsworthian. And spacious, just sitting there at a little desk in the hallway, at a time in the day when everything could feel very bordered and small in my world. I had a distinct, big lesson plan for the rest of the class, I had a rubric in front of me, and there is a definite order to the presidents.
But instead, what was bigger was the student in front of me. Each person is so unique and individual, and their method for memorizing was like that too. Some sang a song to me, some broke it down in a story, some recited it backwards, some rattled off other things out loud that reminded them of where they were going. Some stared off into space for a long time. And there we were in the silence. And then 5 more presidents would show up. (I think they're the ruminating poets in my classroom.)
Some stood up. Some sat down. It was personality just right in front of me, and struggle and triumph and relief and even some tears (but that was short-lived) and we did some breathing and I tried to smile for each one of them and not be scary. And everything was ok.
There's so much learning here for me too. And comic relief. One teacher walked by and saw the struggle and knew the president and just said it. FDR! I shook my fist at him, but the kid did need the help.
Anyway, my students are owning this test, and my very favorite moments are at the end, when they say Barack Obama's name in this great whoosh of relief (actually they're relieved by any president's name after 1990...it's all a shoe in from there) and I get to look them in the eye, and say, 'Wow. Great job.' And then usually I say, 'You aced this' and give them the rubric to take with them into class. It's starting to feel like a certificate of achievement.
In their relief, their real thoughts come out. 'I worked SO hard on this. Are you kidding me? I aced the test?' And then teaching feel SO alive and fruitful and just beyond me. I see them waking up about what they are capable of doing. And it's great medicine for the bleak midwinter when sometimes just getting into the classroom without a ton of salt all over your dress clothes is an accomplishment.
These moments really aren't about the teacher. That's the beauty of this as well. It really is what they did. I am just witnessing these things in their 8th grade life. And that's the privilege. This one year, good, bad or ugly...there are many moments that are confrontational and NOT this beautiful for me...and then I send them into high school, and I won't teach them anymore. So it's a little part. But the privilege is, again, the witnessing of it.
As I'm writing and thinking about these instances more and more, I am feeling a kinship to a previous post. Mr. Feeny. Gosh, that guy really did know his stuff, even though he was a sitcom teacher in the 90s. I am thinking of the moment at the end of the clip I added here...
...that showed Mr. Feeny witnessing something that Cory did. It's really not about the teacher, even in a 90s sitcom. And yes, it has been confirmed that this episode has made more than one young, aspiring teacher cry. Thank you, Maddie Baird. You are a kindred in teaching. And I'm glad we often share the impact of a 90s childhood in common conversation.
Cheers to the presidents, hard work paying off, and witnessing the good. Time for school.
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