Keep an Open Mind

Today was the last day in my To Kill a Mockingbird unit.  My students have been working on their essays for TKAM over the past month, and they turned in their final essays today, which are worth a pretty significant chunk of points.  As they turned in their essays, it was almost as if you could feel the entire room relax.  After I had collected all the papers, I took a few minutes to congratulate my students on finishing their essays.  I told them that they had worked really hard for a long time, and that now, hopefully, they had turned in something that they could really be proud of.  A few of my students responded to this by saying things like "I actually kind of liked writing that essay." or "I'm so excited for you to read my essay." It was so nice to reflect with them after they finished the process of writing their papers.  It was also nice to see that some of the students who were initially apathetic or nervous about the essay were able to see that they had improved, and that maybe writing an essay can be a worthwhile and even fun activity.  After all, I keep telling my students that writing an argumentative essay is just like arguing with someone, except that no one can argue back!

Toward the end of class, I reminded my students that we're going to be reading Romeo & Juliet next.  At first, my announcement was met with a lot of ugly sounds - groans, moans, and a few "Do we have tos?"  Now, I would say that my students have made this sound pretty much every time I've introduced a new project/story.  Many of the kids who had just told me that they enjoyed writing their TKAM essay or enjoyed reading TKAM made those same ugly noises when I told them three months ago that we were going to read TKAM.  It's almost like they have that first bad reaction because they think they're supposed to immediately dislike anything related to school.  I pointed out to my students that they made the same sounds when I introduced TKAM and that most of them ended up enjoying the book and getting a lot out of it.  I asked them to keep an open mind about R&J, and told them that they will likely be pleasantly surprised at the end of the R&J unit like they were with the TKAM unit.

I feel like I spend a lot of time in my classroom communicating the value of what I'm teaching to my students.  And I also know that a lot of my students listen to me and eventually try to be more open-minded.  My goal, however, is that one day, my students will be open-minded right from the start.  There shouldn't be an attitude that everything to do with school is boring or pointless.  I'm not sure where it comes from, but a lot of my students come into my classroom already possessing that attitude.  I'm going to spend the rest of the year trying to rid my current students of that attitude as much as possible.