February 5, 2010
The heavens opened up, and there was discussion.
My class this semester talks to me.
This, honestly, really caught me off-guard. Last semester, it required some teeth-pulling to get my students to actually discuss anything I put before them, and as such I had planned around the fact that I would have to pre-prepare them with things to say in order to get them to talk. There would always be group work and pre-discussion before discussion.
This semester is different. I have a much, much larger group of people who offer up thoughts and comments without hesitation. I’ve ran out of time twice already because I didn’t want to stop the awesome talking that was going on in class. It’s so awesome.
There are plenty of theories I could throw out as to why this is happening. For one, it’s the second semester, so maybe these students have broken out of the “high school” mode a lot of them were in their first semester. Also, my class is an hour later, which probably is helping my students to be much more awake when they come into class. Or maybe it’s just a much better group of people, I don’t know.
All I know is I feel like I am accomplishing a lot more already, and I feel like, for the most part, they’re getting it. I’m unsure what this means for my students. Hopefully they’re getting more out of it too. But for me, as teacher, this is the very best thing.
We are going to have so many discussions. Yes we are.