Husbands, Ghosts, and Journals

So when I first titled this blog "You Can't Imagine How Much Fun I'm Having," I was being a little sarcastic. Just a little. After this last week, though, I can really say that I'm having some fun. (Who cares if it was a short week?)

On Wednesday in my 11th grade class we read through a poem called "When the Young Husband" by Donald Hall. The poem basically tells a story about a young husband who picks up his friend's wife. They're in a taxi cab, supposedly on their way to a hotel room, and then a voice shows the husband what his future will be like if he chooses to go through with this, kind of like the Ghost of Cheating Yet to Come.
The class did fairly well with the poem. I'd say it was a fairly accessible poem, but it did have some obscure details and unfamiliar vocabulary words. I can say that for the most part, the class was able to make some pretty good guesses about what certain details alluded to. They were really willing to take the risk of guessing about what words mean, which is something you have to get used to doing when reading poetry. We pretty much went through the poem stanza by stanza breaking down the plot of the poem and more obscure details. After we got through the basic plot of the poem I had students write about what message they thought the poem was communicating about life.
I'd say that one of the small successes for the day was that every student in the class participated in some way. From my observation of the class while reading poetry in class last semester, many students would be disengaged while poems were being read. Students who remembered to bring their textbooks wouldn't even have the book open or would just have their heads down at their desks. During most of the reading of the poem and the discussion, students had their heads up or were looking at the text. I would have to give lots of credit to the content of the poem, though. It was a pretty steamy poem, and it felt great as a teacher to see the kids' facial reactions to parts of the text. I was definitely expecting the giggles to come when a student had to read the phrase "the penis elevates." I was glad to see students react to the poem. They handled that line pretty maturely, though.
The most rewarding experience was having students share from little journal entries/quick-writes I had them write. A student who failed last semester, cut once in a while, and often arrived tardy read his entry. And he nailed it. He mentioned how the poem was telling people to be more responsible with their actions and to take the time to examine the consequences of their actions before making choices. Sadly though, he didn't turn in his journal entries for the week! AHHH! I was looking forward to reading his other thoughts for the week. But oh well. Still a fun week.

First of all, I hate logging into this thing. I think I actually have to type in my email address instead of my username. Oh well.

Today in class we studied the song "Santeria" by Sublime and tried to connect themes from the song to our reading of Othello. As I started the day I really had no clue how the class would react to studying a song because it seems they hadn't had a chance to do anything like this all year long (and maybe ever in their lives). Before listening to the song the class read through the lyrics individually. I noticed that at least three different times, students asked if they were actually going to get to listen to the song. I have a bunch of different takes on that. Some students were probably excited to get to listen to music in class, but I'm sure others were just glad they didn't have to read any Shakespeare for once.
We went over some essential vocabulary words before listening to the song, and one student who has been particularly challenging in terms of classroom behavior was able to make probably his first academic contribution to the class. "Santeria" uses some Spanish words like "sancho" and "heina," and this student, Ethan, was able to define these for the class. I was hoping that one of my students would be able to help the class understand what these terms meant, so when Ethan raised his hand saying he knew those words I was so excited.
The first two weeks he was extremely disruptive in class. Last week after a class we had a short talk at lunch about classroom conduct. His dad had left a note with counseling to have his teachers contact him, so I also talked to his dad on the phone the night before our short conference. This third week though he has shown some behavioral improvement. (I'd drop the "extremely" and just call him disruptive now.) Generally the class listens to him, so it felt great to have him making a helpful contribution to the class. He seemed to stay on point throughout the rest of the song. I knew coming in he'd enjoy the lines in the song with the most attitude, for example, "Daddy's got a new .45," or "Believe me when I say that I got something for his punk ass." This was my first major success with Ethan.
In terms of the work he produces and his performance on quizzes, I wish there was some kind of success to talk about. He's bombed the first few vocab quizzes and didn't do too well on the first Othello quiz. Early in the semester he wrote that his goal was to pass the class. When I talked to him about that goal earlier in the week, he pretty much told me, "Well it's just a goal. It doesn't mean I have to do it." He failed last semester, and he's off to a really slow start this grading period. I'm struggling to find ways to get him to care about completing assignments, though I am relieved his behavior has been improving. He seems to have a decent understanding of Iago's character, though I'm not sure how much of the play he's actually read. I'm going to try to have the students do some persona-writing this coming week. Hopefully he'll respond to pretending to think and write like Iago.