The Magic of Poe

This week seemed to last forever again, but it was actually a pretty good week overall. This was my third week of teaching all of the classes and it feels pretty normal now. Still exhausting and stressful, but normal. As the end of my student teaching gets closer and closer, the more I am realizing how difficult it is going to be to leave my students. I worry about them and do not want to "give them back" to the actual teacher. I know I have to and I know going back to Cornell will be great, but a large part of me really wishes I could stay just a little longer. I feel like I am just now really starting to to get the hang of things and really understanding the world of teaching. But now, just as things are starting to make more sense, I have to leave.

Anyway, we continued our unit on reading suspense stories. I think (the days kind of run together sometimes) on Tuesday we read "The Sniper." It is a short story about, surprise, a sniper in Ireland during the Troubles. I showed two videos as part of my anticipatory set (teacher language!). The first gave a brief history of the civil war/the Troubles in Ireland, explaining who was involved and major events. The second video showed actual photos and video footage from the late 60's to late 90's which gave the students a clearer image of how heartbreaking and terrifying the Troubles were (and still are, even though they signed a peace agreement, there is still violence from time to time). I don't want to give away the ending of the story, but when I read the last sentence, it was great seeing their reactions. Seeing them have an emotional reaction to a story and to the lives of people in other countries was really refreshing. Junior high students are, typically, very self-centered and seeing them think about the problems of others for a little while was amazing.

On Thursday we started our Edgar Allan Poe unit. I read "The Tell-Tale Heart" aloud to all three classes. There were very few students who said the did not like the story; honestly, I think the students who said they didn't like it, just wanted to go against the majority. It was so fun seeing the level of engagement as I read (quite dramatically)- I could feel my students hanging on every word. On Friday, I showed to one of my classes a pretty cool animation of the story that I found on Youtube. However, I was quite flattered to hear them say that they found it more engaging when I read it to them. Even though Poe tends to write well above an eighth grade reading level, my students really love him already. Anything that can get my kids this engaged is pretty magical.

On a slightly less happy/successful note, I was also reminded this week of how mean junior high girls can be. One of my students turned in something and had drawn pictures of her classmates on the back. Overall, they were cute and nice pictures. However, one picture was of another girl and was labeled with a rather unfortunate/rude nickname. The student who drew this picture is an excellent student and is, normally, a very nice girl. I was pretty shocked to see that she had turned something in with something like this on it.

This was also upsetting to me because the girl who was in the picture is another one of my top students. I love having her in class and always look forward to reading her work. I know she can be a bit of a mean girl to other students, but I honestly believe this comes from her home life. She is in a truly tough situation that I cannot even imagine being able to handle. I do not know how she is able to be so successful at school when her home life is so tough. I am continually amazed by her. Because of this, it is really upsetting to me that the other girls are being so mean to her. I really wish I could make them realize how their actions affect and hurt others, but, at this age, they generally do not seem to care.

On a lighter note, I only have 2.5 weeks left in Arizona. This next week is going to be pretty easy too. We have field trips both Monday and Wednesday in addition to no school on Thursday. This week will definitely go by quickly and should be pretty stress free.