The Day I Crushed It in my Classroom

Sometimes, there are moments that come together to lift you, smack you down, or remind you who you are. Those days can be painful, rewarding, enlightening, or all of these at once.

Last week, I was having a conversation with a particular student who was in my class last year. She is a special talent, but I worry about her. She is one of my kids. I felt a sense of ease when she described her current teacher in this way: "He seems to be incredibly kind." I know how important this description is for so many kids. It allows them to let their true selves develop and thrive. It is vital. And it is accurate.  Later, I opened an email from a parent. I will not go into details, but the note made me swell up a little bit with pride. She told me my classroom is a safe place, a place a student can feel comfortable. I was having a very satisfying, rewarding morning.

Kids need those places. For so many students, school is a place to take a deep breath, feel the warmth of a caring adult, build themselves up, and rally the strength it takes to meet the rest of the world. To be an active part of that, to have my room serve as a sanctuary or just a place of calm means the world to me. To know that our hallway and our school is full of teachers who work each day to provide that for our kids warms my heart. I felt such pride that morning as I thought about ways we help our students grow and find their ways.  I was ready to take on the day with a bounce in my step and a confident smile on my face. I was feeling it.

Then, in short, I crushed it, and not in a good way. Not in the perfect swing, blast the ball over the centerfield fence way. Not in the take the handoff and hit the gap into the open field, striding to the endzone way. Not in the have them on the edge of their seats with excitement and engagement sort of way. No. I crushed it horribly. I placed my foot on top of a delicate blossom, pressed down with my considerable weight, and ground the petals into the gravel. Yeah. It was not a good moment.

I embarrassed a student in my room. I took a good-natured back and forth and, without noticing until it was too late, I allowed it to become something painful. I allowed laughing eyes to turn dark and tearful. We talk about the Pink Floyd line "No dark sarcasm/In the classroom". That day, I had thrown that shadow, somehow had allowed myself to become that mocking old man who ridicules a young poet for jotting down future classic rock lyrics. For that student, at that moment, my classroom was a terrible place. And it was because of me.

I did not realize it until it was too late. When I did, I apologized, profusely and sincerely. The young person said, in a whisper, "It's ok." No, it's not. I told her that. It is not ok. It is never ok for my classroom to become a place where a student does not feel safe or fears what might happen next. I am not talking about a student being uncomfortable because she has to admit she had failed to meet responsibilities. I do not mean light-hearted banter and joking that both sides enjoy. This was different. This was unnecessary.

The fact is, if a student does not feel safe in my classroom, he is not going to allow himself to be vulnerable. And if he is not somewhat vulnerable, he will not take chances, and if he does not take chances, he will not grow. In English, each time we write, we put a little bit of ourselves on the page. Each discussion can be a step out on a ledge. Those steps and that blood are necessities for students to really find who they are and to learn to express themselves, to develop the confidence needed to let themselves go. That takes a safe place.

So, now what do I do? I fix it. I admitted I was wrong, not just so she would feel better at that moment but because she needs that I understand I was wrong. She needs to know that I make mistakes, and I own up to them. She needs to know that I will do better, that each day, I will work to help create a safe place. And she needs to know that she can still take chances, and sometimes fail. She needs to know that I am not going to laugh at her, but I may chuckle along with her as I help her and brush her off. If I am lucky, she will do the same for me.

One Man's Trash...

One man's trash is another man's treasure. That cliche might not be more evident anywhere than in a an English classroom that uses flexible seating.

Last winter, we saw a post from a teacher Twitter about the idea of Blackout Poetry. In a nutshell, you take discarded pages of print, newspapers, old books, pages from a magazine, and you find words that go together. Sometimes, the words clomp up and string together easily. At other times, they skip and bounce, having to be drawn together with more creative strings. Austin Kleon has produced some impressive work using this type of approach, inking up portions of entire newspapers, and leaving behind both poetic and visual images. No longer is a page of text something to throw away; it is truly something to recycle. My students seemed to fall in love with it. My box of pages from books that were falling apart would mysteriously empty after the Hopkins sisters visited my room. Mya startled us all with some strikingly vivid imagery. Kenz made me take a deep breath, and Neil showed me that pages from old Harlequin Romance paperbacks may not be the best resource for a class with creative sophomore boys. I could go on and on about the what they kids created, and I am proud of the pages that eventually were tacked to my bulletin board. Old pages, new ideas. Old text, new excitement.

Teachers seem to be natural scroungers. Many of us see an old chair and wonder, "Would my kids use that if I put it in the corner of my classroom?" A table discarded from a science room might miraculously acquire a fresh coat of paint and show up in an English classroom at the other end of the building. Throw-away pool noodles become decorating supplies and exercise ball stands. Garage sales are an addiction, and at every turn, the potential for something that might make a classroom just a little more inviting and effective is found in the oddest of places. Or, maybe that is just me. I doubt it though, since a colleague, Sam Neill (visit her blog too) has coined our ELA classrooms at BHS the "Hallway of Misfit Furniture".

So, it should come as no surprise that a broken chair, a box of old books, and a forgotten display shelf were the inspirations this summer for the latest addition to my classroom. I will let you in on something: I really dislike the plastic student chairs in most classrooms. One goal of mine since I began using flexible seat was to acquire enough office chairs at garage sales so that no student would ever have to sit in one in my room, even if they choose to sit at a table. One of the biggest issues with those plastic chairs is that every single one develops a broken rivet and begins to wobble. I had two such broken chairs in my room that had lost all but one rivet, leaving them useless. Or so I thought. My floor sofa, a student favorite, needed additional support. A plastic chairback became a perfect solution. Because I cannot throw anything away without exploring every potential use, I held on to the base. I am glad I did. A brainstorm and a little bit of work later, I had constructed a low table, complete with student samples of blackout poetry displayed beneath plexiglass. I had one more base, which I tucked away in the garage until my next inspiration hit.

Later, I found an old shelf from a display counter in the rafters above my garage. It was left by the house's previous owners, and I, of course, had not thrown it away. The surface of the shelf was bubbled and, honestly, kind of gross. I needed to cover it with something. I started with the idea of more student blackout poetry, covered with clear contact paper. Then a thought struck me. I had a box of books that I had bought at a garage sale for 50 cents. They were falling apart and "worthless". I collected the pages of one old book of "Classic American Fiction" that had broken away from the book's spine and began gluing. They covered the top of the table, leaving a smooth and intriguing surface. (Note: when transporting a paper-covered table in the bed of a pickup, avoid doing so on a Kansas morning with 96% humidity. The pages won't be so perfect when you get to school. But hey, nobody's perfect.) In my head, it would be an organic piece of creative work for and by the students in my class. I wanted them to circle, underline, write, and scribble all over the table. On the first day of school, I explained to my classes that they were welcome to begin transforming the top of the table into their own work of art. If they liked what they created, we would snap a picture of it and probably post it on Twitter. If they hated it, we could paste a new page over the top of it, and they could go again. If we filled the tabletop with their works, we would snap an image to immortalize it, and lay down a new canvas of pages. They seemed intrigued. However, they hesitated. For so long, we have told our kids not to write on the tables, to remain seated, to keep quiet. Breaking those bindings can be somewhat difficult. Finally, one student from my creative writing class began circling words and then blacking out others. Soon, four students sat around the table, pencils and Sharpies in hand, letting the pages write the poems. One student kept coming back each day, adding a word or two. Another artfully blued out her blackout page, fading away in an artful display, mainly because the marker was drying out. Sometimes the "mistakes" and "screw ups" can lead to the most beautiful results.

The table is still not filled, and there are coffee stains on some of the pages, which I find oddly neat. I leave the markers on the tabletop, and sometimes felt tip pens show up and be added to the collection. I have noticed more students reading through the pages that are inked up. Hopefully, they will grow brave enough to start marking for themselves.

It's for them after all, and I love seeing them make it theirs.