During our first day of class, after initial introductions, I did a visualization exercise with my students. I asked them to close their eyes and go back to middle school. I asked them to see themselves sitting at a desk in a classroom and look around at the students, the teacher, and the walls. I suggested they note textures, smells, sounds and the feelings of of that place and time. Then each student wrote about a memorable moment in their lives during that time. It was a way to get to know each other and at the same time illustrate that middle school can be the best and the worst of times. Here are some examples of the range of experiences: people who had their first euphoric romance, people who got expelled, people who were so ill they had to home school, people whose 8th grade classroom was held up at gun point by a girl, people who remembered the rigorous discipline and community of music and sports, people who entered the revolving door of the foster system, people who discovered their parents' drugs.
Then we watched the first video of "School: The Story of American Education" which gives an overview of the struggle to create free education for all citizens in our country. It serves to clarify that what we now take for granted had to be sold to a resistant American public.
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My eighth grade teacher was Sister Mary Virginette at St. Gregory the Great school in Cleveland. I remember diagraming sentences, struggling with math, a flash flood and getting my first pair of heels for the graduation ceremony. We didn't have any art classes.
ReplyDeleteWow, what a range of important, life-forming experiences. I remember middle school as both painful and awkward, silly and wacky. My art teacher was also the volleyball coach who called me twinkle toes because my back leg flew up when I served. It was the only art class I ever took during public school. Sad, huh?
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