I'm heading into a new unit on the short story. I'm using Gary Soto's Living Up the Street as the cornerstone, and bringing in a few of my favorite shorts. The idea is to get the students to understand what goes into a short story--elements such as voice, plot, and point of view; devices such as metaphor, use of imagistic detail, foreshadowing and symbolism.
Who knows if and how this is going to produce many good stories. My hunch is that those students who turn in good stories would have done so before the lessons I'm poised to give. That's always the big question for me as a teacher: how much difference am I making? I'm going to try to answer that here in a stream of consciousness manner.
First, although the already good writers may learn little directly from me, there is rarely any harm done in practicing what they already know--and usually some good comes of it. I'm helping in that way: I'm providing practice, as well as demonstrating that this sort of thing is okay and worthwhile to think about and do... which is a kind of modeling.
Second, of the students who frankly don't give a damn about how to write (or thoughtfully read) a short story, I might be getting through to one or two with some aspect of my presentation I may not even be aware of. Hurray for accidental influence!
Third, for those students in between apathetically unskilled and apathetically skilled--the majority who are most prime for learning--the art and craft of teaching really comes into play. It's for them that I have to make calculated moves; present rubrics and exercises that are full and engaging, but not too complex; assignments that are challenging, but doable... and repeatable.
I know that if I were a really good teacher, I would be burning the midnight oil every night, trying to figure out how to reach every single one of my students with every single letter of my lessons, but I'm not there yet. For now, I'm limiting myself to gearing my lessons for the middle majority, and catching the others as I can. Would George Bush be proud of me? I wonder.
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Bard Boy, you seem to be much more comfortable with the realities and limitations of the job than I am. I'm constantly finding myself stuck in the drama of planning and feeling frantic about it, whereas it seems you have accepted and actually embraced it.
I feel like my lessons planned essentially at the last minute are actually sometimes my best ones, as they are the ones that are most present to the continuity of the previous class.
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