Even if I only reach one...
As a teacher, there are times that you know your lesson is a dog. You realize that most of your students will not only be unable to appreciate or understand the material you're presenting, but that they simply won't give a damn. Yes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him appreciate how that water will make him a more-balanced horse that could potentially grow up and do things to help all the other horses, or at least not be a f--king drag on everybody else in the stable.
And so you tell yourself, in between taking shots of paint thinner and calculating the years til retirement, it'll all be worth it, if one of the kids milling around your classroom, just one...actually gets it.
I had a plan going into last Monday morning. It was a week where we were finally finishing up standardized testing, and to keep things moving (and dare I say, not academic), I was going to show the kids a documentary called Batkid Begins [review]. It was going to be great. I printed out some higher-level questions, made a cool graphic for my home slide, and was literally making sure the assignment stacks were looking good, when I realized that I had already shown the documentary this year. To these kids. Aw, shit.
So, with less than five minutes before it was go-time, I pulled Most Valuable Players out of my sweaty ass. Even before understanding what it was all about, I headed to Common Sense Media (the best website alive for a slacker teacher) to check the content. Some brief talk about gay students, someone says 'maybe we're bitches?' and the use of the word kick-ass topped the list of questionable occurrences, and away we went. Now all I had to do was make it fit.
As a teacher, there are times that you know your lesson is a dog. You realize that most of your students will not only be unable to appreciate or understand the material you're presenting, but that they simply won't give a damn. Yes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him appreciate how that water will make him a more-balanced horse that could potentially grow up and do things to help all the other horses, or at least not be a f--king drag on everybody else in the stable.
And so you tell yourself, in between taking shots of paint thinner and calculating the years til retirement, it'll all be worth it, if one of the kids milling around your classroom, just one...actually gets it.
I had a plan going into last Monday morning. It was a week where we were finally finishing up standardized testing, and to keep things moving (and dare I say, not academic), I was going to show the kids a documentary called Batkid Begins [review]. It was going to be great. I printed out some higher-level questions, made a cool graphic for my home slide, and was literally making sure the assignment stacks were looking good, when I realized that I had already shown the documentary this year. To these kids. Aw, shit.So, with less than five minutes before it was go-time, I pulled Most Valuable Players out of my sweaty ass. Even before understanding what it was all about, I headed to Common Sense Media (the best website alive for a slacker teacher) to check the content. Some brief talk about gay students, someone says 'maybe we're bitches?' and the use of the word kick-ass topped the list of questionable occurrences, and away we went. Now all I had to do was make it fit.
