Week 4

This last fourth week of school is about that elusive event known as the "teaching moment" where teacher and students are interacting on the same plane absorbing and reflecting an epiphany of knowledge gained at precisely the same time in each of our brains at once. We all celebrate this oneness together with a kind of supernatural energy that causes a weird educational euphoria for all of us. It's rare and it's worth the wait. I try to make it happen as much as I can.
Well. It certainly did not happen in my morning class. I tried 16 ways to Sunday to tie together the current readings and a language exercise with a writing assignment due next Tuesday. I only managed to get quizzical looks from student faces. They could not understand my expectations. In desperation, I stood in front of them and waved my arm and hand in the air as if I were erasing everything that had happened in the last few minutes. Then I moved my body to another teaching area in the classroom and came up with a different way to explain the assignment. I think it worked. We'll see on Tuesday.
I thought about this experience several times before my afternoon class when I'd have to deliver the same lesson and make the same assignment. I came up with a new strategy that hit right on. The "teaching moment" occurred just after the assignment was made. Students began talking about what topics they would choose to write about with a lively enthusiasm not often witnessed in a writing class. One young man actually stood up and asked happily, "You mean I can write about types of zombies? REALLY?"
"Absolutely," was my sincere reply. And then he went on to tell the whole class about his plan to get this essay completed. He took off after class announcing his intention to get started right away. And then he came back into the classroom and "oh, yeah-ed" me with, "This is the first time I've ever, ever been truly excited about a writing assignment." His response mimicked what was going on in several other corners of the classroom just then. We all "got it" at the same time.
I will definitely miss these extraordinary moments when teaching and learning come so seamlessly and so speedily together that we all feel as if we have had brain growth at precisely the same time.