AP English: What I want you to know

This is, in part, a response to te@chthought's Reflective Teaching 30-Day Blogging Challenge (which I am beginning somewhat belatedly, and probably won't manage to do consecutively).  The first topic: "Write your goals for the year.  Be as specific or abstract as you'd like to be."

I shared this in person with the real intended audience.

To my students:

Every year around April, I start thinking about how I am going to do things differently the next year.  Some things stay the same - there have been blogs and journals and OPs for about a decade now, but every year - sometimes every marking period - they get tweaked a bit.  I try to live out Maya Angelou’s words “When you know better, you do better.”

So starting in April, and then through May, and June, and July I thought about what it is that I want you to walk away with when you leave 235 at the end of this year.  I thought back over my own education, and the teachers who had an impact on me.  Funny thing is that the memories I have from my foundational years are sometimes more of traumas than triumphs.  At least that’s how I remember them.

Like the time I didn’t do my homework in 5th grade and Mrs. G., my all time favorite teacher, said, “I am disappointed in you.”  And I stood outside the classroom door crying for 20 minutes (or at least what seemed like 20 minutes).

Or the time shortly after I moved to Bayville in first grade.  I had to go to Mrs. F.’s second grade class for reading, and I was so scared I cried every day.  (Especially the day when Mrs. F. tried to make me sit near her so she could comfort me, and I started crying harder because then I was crying because I was afraid of her.  I got over it.  It was more about my own small, shyness than it was about her.)

Or the time in second grade that Mrs. S made me take a story I had written and go into other classrooms and read it to teachers I didn’t even know.  I don’t think I cried that time - I think I just blacked out because of the overwhelming anxiety that swamped me.  

As I thought about all of those things while I drove along route 35 one August day, I also thought about a discussion I had with a college-professor associate of mine who came here and did a workshop a few years ago. In the context of teaching some teachers more about reading and writing, she said that in those agonizing moments when students are stumped, that discomfort that overwhelms the room means learning is happening.   I disagreed with her, but I wasn’t sure why until this summer when I had an epiphany.  

I learned very little from the discomfort of those moments I described earlier.  In fact, my learning was hampered by my discomfort.  Sure, when you are learning something you are going from the known to the unknown, and that can feel like shaky ground.  But the real discomfort doesn’t come from learning, it comes from fear of failing - which is not at all the same thing.  

Suddenly I could see how those experiences have contributed to who I am as a teacher.  And I could see that I learned things from those days - both about being a student, and about being a teacher - that I couldn’t have learned without them.  I learned that yes, you do have to stretch yourself beyond your current limits to learn something new.  But you either have to feel desperate enough to force yourself to stretch, or safe enough to want to do it willingly.  I think we achieve more when we feel safe, rather than desperate.  Now,  please don’t confuse safe with complacent.  I want you to stretch, to make yourself bigger - to pull yourself in different directions like people do with a close-fitting t-shirt when they want a little room to breathe and grow.  I want you to know that this class is a safe place stretch.

I think about that every morning while I drive to school as I review what it is I want you to take away at the end of the day, and what those daily gleanings will lead up to at the end of the year.  

The list of things I want you to know is long, including but not limited to the following:

Know that knowing things is the lowest level of thought.  Creating things (which means you have to know things first, of course) is the apex.

Know you can start a sentence with because.

Know that you are, right now, fully equipped to be an agent of change in the world.

Know that I see when your stretch yourself, and your moments of bravery are noted and appreciated.

Know that language has power because it is the substance of thought and our thoughts carry our dreams and our histories.

Know that your grade should represent your learning. Not how nice you are or how many cans you bring in for a food drive.

Know that everything you do matters.

Know that you almost always have a choice and every choice has consequences.

Know that you can do things you never thought you could.

Know that sometimes you can't see the bigger picture from where you stand, but that doesn't mean there isn't a bigger picture.

Know that you contain the universe. You literally drink and breathe the remnants of stars and dinosaurs and all that has come along since, and you exhale those things and some of yourself into the world with each breath.

Know that a sentence can be really really long and not be a run-on.

Know that syntax matters. If you put the bread at the bottom of the grocery bag it is going to get squished.

Know that there is always more to learn about everything - even what you think you have mastered - so look for it.

Know that spelling counts. And not proofreading is lazy.

Know that your reputation introduces you but your character makes a lasting impact.

Know that success and failure, however you define them, are like degrees on a thermometer or minutes on a clock. We will all pass through both of them many times in our lives.

Know that stories and metaphors are how we make sense of the world. So literature, like science or math, is just another way to explore the way the world works.

Know that empathy is probably the most important skill set you can learn

Know that the best way to honor your history and prepare for your future is to do the best you can with today.

Know that everyone is creative; everyone can write; everyone has an important story.

I know that some of those things sound Englishy, and many do not.  That makes sense to me, because English is just one piece of the bigger picture.  And yes, of course I want you to know how to read with insight and write with your own voice.  I want you to use semicolons and dashes often, and well.  I want you to capitalize, and spell, and punctuate correctly so that your ideas will make sense to the world.  I want you to develop a prodigious vocabulary.  And I want you to use your education to educate others, without being supercilious or condescending.  

What my best teachers taught me was nothing factual. I don't remember any single piece of fact that any of them passed along to me that has made a life or death (or even a pass/fail) difference in my life. Of course I know that that knowledge has been important to building my foundation. I believe that the more knowledge I have, the more sense I can make of the world and my place in it. And I couldn’t do what I do without it. But what my best teachers in their best moments have shown me in myriad ways is bigger than all the facts that even the ever expanding Wikipedia could contain.  They helped me see that I have a responsibility to be my best self, whatever that is on any given day.  They helped me see that what I have in me is enough, and at the same time they helped me see that with enough gumption, I can take on anything.

Some of what we learn this year we will learn by reading other people’s stories, and some of it by writing our own; some things we will find simply through the way we spend our time, or tucked into things we talk about, and even the sound of the words that convey our thoughts. I hope you will leave this year convinced that mistakes are opportunities and failure isn’t fatal.  I want you to know that commas make a difference, that you have big thoughts, that you are a writer with a voice that deserves to be heard. I hope you will stretch yourself to your seams and on through them to find that voice, and listen to it.  I want you to know the multitude of terms and skills you will need to get a 5 on the AP exam. I hope you are as sure as I am that a 5 on the AP exam is within your reach, and will be a fitting and exciting reward for your year of hard work.

But, even more, hope you know that getting that 5 (which I fully expect you will)  won’t make you a better person than you are right now, but that paying attention to how you go through the world just might.