Saturday, September 26, 2009

Up In the Club

As you know, this is the BEST YEAR EVER of my teaching career.

One reason is that, upon the good counsel of my friends Jackie and Rachel, I've adopted a "No Kill" policy on literature.

That means we will absolutely not over-analyze a text until the kids can't wait to be finished with it forever.

I love the policy -- I can't believe it took me so long to articulate it, when in theory I've held it all along -- but sometimes it is hard. For instance, if I think the kids haven't properly appreciated a beautiful passage or perhaps they've inferred the "wrong" theme of a poem.

"Yeah," Rachel sympathized, "You have to relinquish control of the text."

So, there you go.

Also, it's the BEST YEAR EVER because many of us English teachers are interested in learning choreographed dances. Yes! AND we have a colleague who is both an English teacher and a choreographer. Double Yes!

You might think I'm kidding about the dances, but I'm totally not.

2 comments:

Avery said...

I just wanted to say that I love reading your blog. I would totally hang out with you if we lived close.

KC said...

Thanks, Avery! That's so nice!