A Good Conversation

I remember in the first month or so of school this year, I was driving to school and a song came on the radio. I don't remember what song it was, but I do remember nearly crying as I listened to it. Keep in mind, I had crazy, first-year teacher syndrome in which I found myself crying at completely random moments, but still, the song had an impact on me. And I had this strange thought: my kids would never appreciate this song; at this point, most of them wouldn't even know what it was talking about because the vocabulary was vastly above their level.

It saddens me the way I have to take a poem, a beautiful story, and stretch and pull and yank and thin it out so it is accessible to my crazy untameable classes. I have that image that I'm sure most lit teachers have, of an enjoyable in-depth discussion that brings out the best of the text. Instead, I often find myself giving in at the last minute to just trying to talk them into looking at the text, simply reading it, and then having to move on because they have wasted so much time.

I love reading, so it is often inconceivable to me that my students just don't.

Once, I tricked them. We had read most of Flowers for Algernon in the typical way: a few pages a day, some questions to make sure they at least knew what was going on even if the hadn't really read, and moving on. But then for the last part of the story, I told them we were just finishing up, and they were welcome to lean back and I was just going to turn off the lights and read and relax. I put on my best reading voice and read the last part of the text.

The students, even those who hadn't read at all, were aware of Charlie and what was happening to him. They knew that Algernon had died and many guessed Charlie would too, although there were those that thought the main character wouldn't possibly be killed.

As soon as I got everyone listening for a moment (which took a while and a lot of fighting), the room became silent. I read the same part of the story four times that day, and every time I reached the point at the story when you know Charlie dies, I got goosebumps. The kids were so still. And after WEEKS of the kids telling me what a stupid story it was and telling me I need to pick something interesting and less boring, I got countless comments: "That story was good."

Unfortunately, that doesn't change that they hadn't read most of it. And I'm not nearly accomplished enough to turn that enthusiasm into a broader love of reading.

But this week, one student said something in our class discussion. We read all of the Anne Frank play, and were starting to watch "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas". This student is in my lowest-performing class, and reads on a 5th grade level. When I asked about what their impression is of the portrayal of the concentration camp, he was the only one to volunteer. He said "they are controlled by fear." He then went on to describe to me:

The video game Batman has a villain, and in the game the last time you see him he says, "At the end of fear is oblivion." Then he just disappears. The student said, "It's the same with the people in the camps. You can tell by the way Anne and her family hid, and by the way that the little boy in the movie runs when they call him. There are so many of them, but it's too late. They are so controlled by fear that it's going to be easy for their lives to turn into oblivion. They could have done something, but they didn't know in time, and now they are too scared to."

Suddenly,  I found myself in a discussion of the way government holds its citizens accountable with fear, how systems large and small rely on fear to keep subjects in check - including schools - and how without fear, there would just be a mess. And suddenly we're talking about anarchy.

I know that each student is so insightful in their own way, but when they are all together that is lost. It takes a conversation like this to reground me in the fact that every one of my students is brilliant, even though they very frequently make terrible, annoying, angering decisions. If one student can do this, they certainly all can.