At the beginning of the last school year, I found myself working with two very different young men in the same classroom. The first boy seemed to have very little interest in education and refused to participate in class activities. His records indicated that he'd rarely met with academic success in previous years. The second young man was a stellar student in previous years and continued to put forth great effort and enthusiasm, but was stumped by the fact that he wasn't earning his usual 90s grades.
The first young man was given a 55 for the first marking period —school policy even when a much lower grade is warranted. Regardless, I continued to challenge him with questions, concepts and skills in an effort to get him involved. I kept telling him that I wanted to know what he was thinking. I was thrilled and so greatly rewarded when, little-by-little, this young man started to tune in more often. On a day I'll never forget, about midway through the year, this same young man came into my classroom and said he'd finished the book he'd been reading for my class. He had been given the chance to choose between three different texts. When I asked him if he enjoyed it, he said, "yeah, I did, and I read the articles you gave me too." I told him how great I thought that was and he replied by saying, "Can you give me more, Mrs. M-G? I'll take whatever you have, but I want to know more and I just need more." That afternoon, as I drove home thinking about the progress this young man had made in my class, my eyes welled up with proud tears.
The other student once asked me, "How do you do that?" When I showed him my process for thinking about texts and analyzing the details, he said, "Okay, give me another character and let me try it." So I did...and within a few minutes, he made his own analysis and I told him he was thinking for himself instead of waiting for answers. He said, "Really? I think I like thinking for myself," and he beamed with pride.
By the end of the year, these two young men were the students I most enjoyed working with in this class. For the final essay of the year, students were asked to create their own thesis statements about all they'd learned and then support them with evidence from the texts we'd read. I had to struggle with my emotions as I had my last conferences of the year with these same young men. On that day, I had the honor of informing both of them that they'd earned grades between 90 and 100 on their final essays.
I have no doubt that there were other factors that helped these young men become so involved in their own learning, since we work as a team at Geneva Middle School, but I'm also sure that I was a part of it as well.
What we do in my classroom and at my school is tune kids into thinking and learning, and then we give them the opportunity to keep doing just that!
(Kristina Mastrangelo-Gasowski is a member of Geneva Teachers Association)