As I embark on my final week with my American Literature classes, or I should say one last day, I look back on this semester and wonder how on earth I will be able to transition back to my world literature mentality. World lit was my catapult into the teaching world, and somewhat of a security blanket, though I do not describe this leap as a secure prospect. I have grown to love my classes this year, in large part due to my familiarity of faces and attitudes. ( I taught about 90% of them last year) I cannot say for certain they feel the same way about me, and they do not have to in order for me to be successful. I am leaving behind more than just attitudes; I leave behind the safety of Harper Lee and John Steinbeck . . . the authors who have already gone through their banishments and ignorance, and the crackles under 451 degrees. Last year I didn't know any better as I ventured into Night and Things Fall Apart. Sometimes ignorance is truly blissful with these things. As I look at my rosters with unfamiliar names I wonder how they will react to my veteran philosophies. And yes, I think I can call myself a veteran at this point. Will I be able to finally read Elie Wiesel's chapter 9 aloud? Will Oedipus Rex be left by the wayside to writing scores and contemporary affairs? The bottom line is this: do I still have it in me, yes after JUST one year, to rally these students who have been abandoned in this "holding pen" by people who make the rules and pay my salary?
Will I be able to endure another child coming to school with a black eye and broken spirit? Change, as we all know, is inevitable. Lately I wonder how much change I am able to support. Does it really matter that we no longer have an AP and out superintendant is an intern? Can it get any worse than this?
After many sleepless nights the answer to all of these questions is YES. I can endure, and things can get much worse, especially for my students. I have a student who can barely read and his handwriting looks more like a first graders than an eleventh. He has been mine for the past two years, first in English 2, now in English 3. As we were finishing our last novel, Barbara Kingsovler's The Bean Trees, I realized he would not be able to do the group readings I had scheduled for the last 5 chapters. In fact, he had barely followed along for the entire book, so what good would it be now to have him struggle with the ending? I asked him to get a computer, to look some things up for me. Although his reading and writing skills are very low, his moral and comprehensive skills are higher than most of his classmates. "K, would you please look up the backgound information of all the presidential candidates? I am curious to see what you find out." K's eyes light up immediately. His passion is history, and can recite all of the supreme court justices in our history. He has said to me before, as we read TKAM, that he thinks it's a shame when so many people focus on the "evil" white people during segregation, that people need to know more about Atticus Finch than the KKK. This student happens to be black. He wants to know if I agree, then wants to know if I think Obama's campaign will turn into a race against black and white. He has the most faith in the people of this country, and those figures who made it so great in the first place. Then he asks me how to get into law school, and if I think it's easier to get a PhD. or a degree in law. I shake my head in disbelief at my colleagues who toss him into the "retarded holding pen". I tell him to make his own decision based on the information he's found, but not before he lets me know the NAACP was founded in 1906.
Then I look at him and let him know I will also be his teacher next year, for English 4. Is it worth it? Yes. Can I go back to roots and move forward at the same time? Absolutely. I think the supreme court justices teach us that on a daily basis . . . at least they teach some very impressionable students.
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