On Teaching: WHO THEY ARE, WHERE THEY ARE GOING

There are really only two things my students need to know in order to be successful in my class: who they are and where they are going. Someone might say, “Well, what about how to write and read? Isn’t that important?” – and I would say of course, but if they don’t know their inner strengths and talents and where they are going in the course, the learning to write and read will only be superficial and ephemeral. They will learn and forget. They will write the dozens of essays and read the difficult books, and when the course is over they will forget them all and be no different than they were before my English class. I want them to have a foundation beneath their learning; I want them to learn because they know who they are and where they are going. I want them to understand, in a very deep way, that they are boundlessly talented creations in an infinitely astonishing universe. I want them to feel, every time they write or read in my class, that they are performing marvelous feats in a marvelous world. But I also want them to have a clear sense of where my course is taking them, and that’s something I need to work on. At this point in the year, my students do not know the destination of the course, because I have simply not made it clear. We have proceded in a “day by day” manner, with no eye on the distant road, the long-term goal. I need to start working on that immediately. I need to show the kids, a few times each week, where this course is hoping to take them. If I can do that, and if the students can keep in mind how strong and blessed they really are, then we have a chance of making this a miraculous year in Room 2.