Wednesday, January 6, 2010

This is just to say...

That's actually the start of one of my favorite poems by William Carlos Williams, but anyway, I just wanted to point out quickly that what started off as a kind of crummy (to use one of our vocab words, atrocious) day turned into a positive one. I began with sleepy students in one class, overly "funny" students in another (ah, fifteen year-old boys), felt a little blue about silly stuff I can't control, and then had a great, positive, helpful chat with my colleague J, who gave me a lovely pep talk and delicious dark chocolate. Next I did an exercise with my freshmen in which I taught them how to write an introductory paragraph. Not terribly exciting to you, but part of the exercise involved them looking over a paragraph I had written and critiquing it. Once they realized I really did want their feedback, they started pointing areas where I could improve, from repetition of the same word to awkward sounding language that needed smoothing over to missing details.

People, when you get fourteen year-olds examining writing and actually seeing what works and what doesn't and having the ability to verbalize that, it's huge. HUGE. Plus they couched their comments so well--honest yet kind. I praised them to the high heavens, but they deserved it. I have a wonderful batch of freshmen this year; I feel extremely lucky that I've got a lot of eager little beavers. It just made my whole day. Tonight I have a girls' night out with sister C. and Mom, plus T got us a super deal on a gym membership and I plan to work out, so I feel very fortunate that I get to move into the second half of the week on such a high note.

Hope you have good Wednesdays as well!

p.s. As per one of Ouiser's recent posts, my next one may well be about snow. We have lots of it. LOTS. You have been warned.

1 comment:

jules said...

Anytime, K. Anytime :)