Getting it right · Tue Jul 4, 23:08 by Eleri Straker
We had student with us last week, someone wanting to observe lessons to help him decide whether teaching was the right career for him. My colleague, who was mentoring him, asked if he could observe one of my lessons. I agreed to let him sit in on the last lesson of a Friday afternoon, which is a lesson with my lovely year 9 group. I knew, that despite it being the last lesson of the week, the temperature being very high and the class room having a lot of windows but no air flow, I could count on that class getting it right.
I’m in the process of teaching them poems from other cultures and I decided to start on one called “Limbo”. It’s a complex piece and one that I think is quite difficult to teach as well as to understand. So I started the lesson by asking them for a definition of the word ‘limbo’. We collated a list of some five or six possible definitions then, having borrowed a measuring stick from the Maths department, I invited students who felt able, to try to actually perform the limbo ‘dance’ by manoeuvring themselves under a gradually lowered stick. Needless to say, this created great hilarity as several students tried their luck to the rapturous applause of their classmates.
I then asked them what they knew of the slave trade and between us, we created a picture of slavery in the time of Shakespeare and today. I told the class about the origin of the limbo stick and left them to imagine the rest.
Then, I read through the poem, paying very close attention to the very specific rhythm, then told the class that they had ten minutes to come up with an interpretation of the poem. When I asked for ideas, they were, initially, very slow in coming, but then, one of the boys suggested that the “darkness surrounding me” was a metaphor for the state of enslavement… and they were off. Each new idea triggering another. Students listened to the opinions of others then bounced off them, considering and reconsidering their own ideas, then developing them. It was loud, hot and absolutely brilliant. Their ideas were fantastic, so innovative, insightful and full of a comprehension way beyond their years.
I happened to glance at the observer and he was sitting on the edge of his seat, his eyes sparkling, as he, along with me, thoroughly enjoyed and wondered at this group’s amazing ability to reason.
When the bell rang for the end of the lesson, they were still arguing and offering opinions. I almost had to shoehorn them out of the door!
As the last student left, my observer said how much he’d enjoyed watching the group and listening to their fantastic interpretations and that that was the reason he wanted to go into teaching. He said that it was wonderful watching students engaging completely with their work and to see the light go on in their eyes as they ‘got it’. It all sounded terribly familiar.
I had to remind him that not all classes are like my year 9, that not every lesson goes as well as that one did. And sometimes the kids really don’t ‘get it’. But sometimes they do, and when that happens, I’m reminded again why I do this job. There are days, as all teachers know, when we feel that we’re in the wrong job and that we can do nothing right. But then there are those other days, when a mathematical measuring pole becomes a limbo stick and a hot sticky classroom becomes an arena for imagination and inspired thought. A day when we do get it right. And that’s the most fantastic feeling in the world.
