Alien Pedagogy

After I was hired but before I started teaching, I skimmed several of my university library’s books on how to become a great teacher. Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs.

I’m a little lost.

A lot of the books that I read encouraged me to instill a love of literature in my students and that would guide them the rest of the way. One of my professors told me to teach students to build relationships with texts. Many of the blogs that I read focus on objectives, skills, and paths to success. I seem to be following the third trend.

Though a few students write things to me like “I never enjoyed English until I took your class,” I think most students remember the strategies, learning activities, and my personality more than Maya Angelou, Homer, and Shakespeare.

I do feel that building personal relationships with the text is very important, but I still think that students must be able to approach a text with strategies and confidence before they can build a relationship with the text. Isn’t that relationship otherwise just a bland, circular statement like “I liked that author because I liked that author?” It seems to me that a sophisticated relationship with the text is one that is based on critical thinking — and critical thinking is a skill that can be taught.

Perhaps that’s naive and I’ll discover a new perspective as I grow as a teacher.

Whenever I get a cold, I take it as a signal that I’ve been working too hard.

This week has been tough. We finished our poetry unit, so that marking and teacher-parent-student negotiating has been intense. I had two basketball games and a practice. Midterm exams were due Thursday. My running mate and I pushed ourselves to an 8 kilometer run. And the weather is cooling off (finally).

So when I realized that my throat was a little rough last night and woke up more than a little groggy this Saturday morning, I decided to take a break.

No marking and no prep work. I’ve even skipped the gym to give my body a break.

DEAR was put on hiatus during one of our lessons this week to make more time for our presentations. So Friday’s DEAR time was a double block. I knew some students might be restless if I didn’t sell it correctly.

First, I asked everyone in the class to pick up either a textbook, pencil, or notebook.

“Now drop it,” I said quietly.

THUMP!

“Read.”

It was probably the best DEAR time so far this year.

My Under 14 Boys team was thrashed yesterday by a team that I found difficult to believe was under fourteen. They were giants.

My team did well. They never gave up and their plays reflected the maturity and discipline that they’d brought to the game.

I’ve switched to endurance training because a coworker and I have entered a ten kilometer run, which is apparently not even a half marathon.

For the first time in my life, I am able to run eight kilometers straight. It’s killing my knees and I may have to get a brace.

Running is far nicer than weight training because it’s very hard to cheat at running. There’s a distance and a time. One of my fellow weight lifters pointed out that I was cheating in my endurance lifting because I wasn’t fully bending my arms (I was only bending ninety degrees, which I’d thought was pretty solid).

I think I’ve lost weight since the start of this program, but I haven’t really monitored it.