Today’s class — opportunistic planning
Today’s topic was “instruction,” which is somewhat difficult because a) this class has quite a bit of teaching experience already, and b) because of the havoc in some of their other courses I’m not quite sure what they do and don’t know on this topic, and c) I was too disorganized to really find out.
So I spent quite a while wracking my brains about what I could do on this topic that I could be sure would be useful and non-redundant. I hit on the idea of looking at the question of how you respond to the kinds of sudden attention-grabbing events that might render your prepared lesson useless.
A good example is 9/11/2001, and I set up a scenario for them in which they were preparing to teach the W.H. Auden poem September 1, which is often cited in the 9/11/2001 context . It’s a good poem, if undoubtedly way over the head of any imaginable high school English class.
It was a good opportunity to hear the different ways my students’ schools had responded to 9/11, which ranged from sending everyone home, to a panicked principal going into everyone’s classes and saying “turn the TV on, this is the real deal,” to teachers who insisted that everything would go on as planned.
My students then worked in groups to come up with modifications to a planned lesson (that they didn’t have, of course) in light of events. As always, I was impressed with their creativity.
I think it is useful for teachers to think about how they would deal with such events in advance, lest they reveal more of their human limitations than they might choose to. As experienced adults, they can play a major role in assuring students that a) the world isn’t coming to an end, b) these are important events that they will always remember and have cause to think about and involve real tragedies , but c) there have been events like this in the past that didn’t imply point “a.” Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is relevant here, because it’s unlikely that anyone will learn from an English lesson when they’re worried that the world is coming to an end.
It was also an interesting class in that it was the first time I’ve been in a classroom at the University of Michigan without my laptop and PowerPoint slides. I figured, if nothing, the contrast from usual practice would be an interesting experience.