The Plunge

I’m sitting here at the ballet studio in Orchard Park, and my hip joints ache. Not because of dancing. Because of teaching. This morning I had my first Teaching Artist Residency and it was a full-frontal plunge into the icy cold waters of the profession.
The school where I’m teaching is near the Erie County Medical Center. It’s a well-appointed public school; I’m teaching Grade 7, three classes, in Poetry. The first class was a rowdy group, mostly girls, few boys. The profile of the class (and the school as a whole) is largely African-American. The teachers I’m working with are mostly Caucasian.
I really don’t know how teachers manage these days. The kids in the first class didn’t know how to focus as a group. Individual, they could focus, but not as a group. I heard time and time again that seventh grade would be the hardest grade to teach; I figured I might as well start where it’s hardest. We read a poem by Nikki Giovanni called “The Reason I Like Chocolate” then we talked about it. Does it feel like a poem? Why? Or why not? What are some of things we expect to find in a poem that we don’t find here? What about punctuation? What about patterns? What about feelings? The boys in the back of the class were a bit sullen, but they joined in. I’d be curious to know how they felt having a man in the class for a change.
The second class was the complete opposite from the first: the students were polite and attentive, and they participated with, if not enthusiasm, then at least a sense of willingness. Also, I had that first 45 minute class under my belt and a sense of what I could do better and what I should let go of. I felt more confident as the day went on. And there were five adults in the class, which may have made a big difference.
Feeling like I owned my lesson plan, I went to my third class but as the minutes ticked by, the students failed to appear. After about ten minutes the teachers said they had to go down to the vice principal’s office: apparently the entire class was being held for misbehavior during the previous period. They finally arrived in class with twenty minutes to go, which left us time only to read the poem and discuss it. It went well, considering. Maybe in the office they’d worked out whatever was going on with them as a group.
I’m going to read over the poems they wrote now. I’ve selected my exemplar for tomorrow and am going to talk about rhyme and rhythm. I’d really like to bring in my nieces’ keyboard to have some bass or something to sample underneath. Maybe that'll grab and hold their attention...