Tonight, like all of my Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I went to class for three hours. Tonight, unlike most of those nights, I had fun.
As we were packing up to go other classmates were exclaiming, "I really had fun tonight," and I can still picture Laura laughing with tears in her eyes, "I think we're having too much fun." All this from a 3-hour discussion of a social justice stance on teaching literature to a roomful of 17 adults.
Mindy and I co-taught the class tonight incorporating the readings, critical literacy picture books, and videos of student work. I had been nervous about how the class would go and whether everyone would be engaged. Teaching to 7th graders and to graduate students are vastly different experiences because of the audience's expectations and abilities and I wasn't sure how everything would play out.
My classmates love to talk, argue, and rally for their points. Tonight everyone was especially engaged. I shared a stack of books I borrowed from my other professor with titles like, "The House That Crack Built" and, "The Lady In The Box," which dealt with topics of homelessness, drug trafficking, deforestation, war, internment camps, and assimilation. Used as a tool for discussion and sharing multiple perspectives, these books are a great resource. We managed to find ourselves on an unnecessary tangent about pacifism and elephants for awhile but eventually got back on track.
I'm glad that I've found a few friends in this class, that I'm learning everyone's personalities, and that on night's like tonight we can laugh together and hopefully help each other to become better teachers.
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