I've recently come under fire from a few extremely uptight middle school parents. These parents think their kids are extraterrestrially smart. And that I should be teaching extraterrestrial curriculum. But you see, I have also have students who fall out of their chairs during class and who sometimes don't know what class they are in. "It's Language Arts, honey. Do you see that short story you're reading?"
So you know what I did? I took a sick day.
Yesterday I received 138 two- to four-page drafts of writing -- stories, essays, poems -- and today I'm reading them. At home. In my p.j.s. Listening to ELO. And to the parents who say the expectations for my class are too low, I say, come on over and check out my dining room table. This outpouring of words and sentences and thoughts can only mean one thing: Something good has been going on in Language Arts this year. And once I give students all of my feedback, based on my 20 years of reading, writing, writing groups, and teaching, all these writers, those who stay in their chairs and those who cannot, will face the arduous task of revision. They will ask me for ideas about sensory detail; they will stick our their tongues as they try to punctuate dialogue correctly; they will ask me what a better word for "fun" is; and they will all produce final drafts that are better, tighter, livlier. It may not be extraterrestrial, but it's hard. And worthwhile.
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This week, WEEK SIX of the term, a (college!) student in the back pointed to me and whispered to his classmate: "What's her name again?"
My friend, this is the level of consciousness in education these days.
Finding the humor in it all stops me from strangling myself.
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