Monday, March 2, 2009
WOW! Today I had one of those classes. You know, the kind that walk into the room and you can feel the energy at the tips of your hair follicles. This little circumstance I am about to discribe will suffice for the teaching strategy that needs improvement. Keep in mind this is a class of eighth graders. My lesson plan intended to lead us into beginning a pursuasive paper tying into black history month. I asked students to give examples of how black people were viewed by their white counterparts in the novels they are reading. I then asked half of the class to play the "Devil's advocate" by supporting slavery and segregation while the other half were civil rights leaders. I managed to keep the class below chaos level, but they threatened to blow at any moment. The slave owners were absolutely pounded by the civil rights activists. They seemed not to realize that the opposition was presenting a hypothetical perspective and not their own. We managed to bring the class back down to a gentle simmer about three quarters of the way through the period and get them working on generating position and opposition ideas for their pursuasive papers. However, I think I will change tactics next time from a volitile debate to something a little softer if the class walks in having apparently just unhooked the caffiene IV.
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I enjoyed your idea about the debate in class on civil rights. It sounds like your class really got into it. I love those days when you feel like the class is really with you and involved in the topic of discussion. Last semester I was reading Fahrenheit 451 with my sophomores and we were discussing relationships. I asked the students how much time they really spent talking with their parents on a daily basis, outside of directional communication (i.e. clean up your room, etc.). This discussion lasted the whole class period and I learned a lot about the perspective of my students. I found it interesting that some of my students felt closer to the divorced parent they didn't live with because their phone conversations. I learned a lot about my students as well.
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