If I Could Do Anything in the World...

It's been a long time since I have posted.  I don't really have a good excuse.  I could say I've been too busy to keep up with a blog, but that excuse has grown cliché.  I'm not too busy.  Not really.  There was a time, just a good week or two, that I felt like I was drowning in paperwork, but that time has gone.  I'm no longer juggling graduate school, teaching, and marathon training.  Now, I get to be fully focused on the most important thing of all, and, no, it's not my student's education.  It's their lives.

I never thought there were enough hours in a day to genuinely care about nearly 160 students, but God has taught me otherwise.  There's more than enough time in a day to love others.  The key is you can't look at yourself so much.

I can honestly say there's never a dull moment in my classroom.  At the beginning of the year, I set out to make grammar studies interesting.  It's not always easy to do.  I'm an English nerd, and I think grammar is about as interesting as a dead bug.  But, that's because worksheets and book work are not my thing.  I always hated doing "busy work."  If you don't have to think about what you're doing, what's the point?  It's just a hand cramp waiting to happen.  Five minutes after the work is done, it is forgotten.  It's like reading several pages of a book before realizing you didn't comprehend a thing.  Not at all what I want for my students.  Not now.  Not ever.

Come to find out, grammar can be transformed into something interesting.  It's like C.S. Lewis once said, "You can make anything by writing."  And you can.  My classes have stripped the dust from grammar studies and brought them to life.  What do I mean by that? 

Well, we've been through a criminal investigation while simultaneously investigating the text for errors.  We've used criminal evidence to convict a character of a crime while simultaneously using textual evidence to strengthen an argument.  We've created characters from nothing more than a "Student Interest Survey."  Round characters, too.  Characters with a background.  Characters with social media.  We've written children's books and examined dental charts to explore text features.  We've interviewed one another and written biographies (past, present, and future) to study verb tenses.  We've even thrown in a few Angry Verbs (thanks to Pinterest).  We've learned to think beyond a straightforward answer using texts revolving around mysteries.  We've learned to use vocabulary rather than memorize vocabulary by writing essays, narratives, arguments, etc.  We've learned to write dialogue by watching Pixar short films without dialogue.  We've learned to write poetry by analyzing poetry like the Inklings.  We've learned that even though the writer writes the story, half the job belongs to the reader (I may write stories and share them with my kids, but the answers are for them to find, not me to tell).  We've learned that reading and writing go hand-in-hand.  We've learned that writing is for everyone - it's just the platform and/or the audience that changes.  Most importantly, though, we've learned that we all have a voice.

Aside from praying for my students, getting to talk to them about life and seeing them smile, writer's notebooks are my favorite part about teaching.  Within the notebooks, my students really open up.  They write about hopes, dreams, struggles.  They ask questions, request advice, tell stories.  The pages they write are pieces of who they are, and let me tell you, my students are something special.  I'd like the whole world to know that.  The kids who walk into my classroom every day are the most incredible people I have ever met.  They all have a story.  Ready to be shared.  Waiting to be heard.

If I could do anything in the world, it would be to change the world for all of my students.  By that, I don't mean to go out and change the world on a big scale.  I simply mean that I would do anything to change the world that each student sees through his/her own eyes.  To take the frowns and turn them into smiles.  To take the negatives and turn them into positives.  To take the "I cannots" and turn them into "I cans."  After all, my students have changed the world for me.  It's the least I can do for them.