Call me B. Robeson, Lost in the Tundra

I believe Plato is first credited with coining a variation of the phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” But what happens why you invent something you don’t need, isn’t applicable, and you use it anyways? What happens when you get a little overly ambitious, and make things more complicated in the name of pursuing a more dramatic effect? What if the blueprints look better than the duct-taped-together reality? This is the story of my week, and the unit plan I taught to a sixth-grade class. (Note: Duct tape can be spelled ‘duck’ or ‘duct’, both variations are correct. During different time periods the adhesive material went by different names, for its ability to repel water and also its ability to fix air ducts.)

I over estimated everything. This isn’t to say I didn’t plan, I just planed wrong. This caused me to go home and rethink my entire unit every night, only to show up the next day realizing that I didn’t salvage as much as I thought I could. It’s safe to say that this week took me down a notch or two. But that’s okay. This is where we learn. This is how we get better.

I’m now thinking back to about a week and a half ago, when I first started planning this lesson. What was I thinking? I had this grand idea, for a rap students would write about the novel Hatchet, and I would come in and apply beats and melodies to their lyrics. This way, the whole process would imitate the process of musical composition and also display how the student’s are receiving Hatchet’s Brian Robeson. It seemed like less of a heart attack when I first thought about it. It seemed like it could work. But I completely underestimated the prior knowledge of the students. Completely.

Things I took for granted:

-I thought students would be able to write lyrics in sets which resembled poetry lines. (i.e. there is a rhyme at the end of the line). Almost all students wrote their rhymes in paragraph form, which I completely did not expect, and I had a very hard time getting through to students that the rhyme was supposed to go at the end of a line. This was a major indicator of how far away I was from my goal, yet I was too far in to jump out. How do I get to final presentations? We haven’t even thought about rhythm yet!

- I also wrote my writing prompts for the week in a paragraph, unnumbered or separated, assuming that this was comprehendible. The sixth graders did not take well to this. They didn’t know how to voice questions, so instead, they just didn’t do anything. Smagorinski says that on average, a student will ask one question a month (87-88). This means I need to come to them before they come to me, and I failed to do this.

Clusters of questions aside, I had a really hard time asking any critical thinking questions which asked the students to apply their own knowledge. I should have phrased things better. I can’t help but think that a young adult novel such as Hachet has no point if it’s not applied to one’s own life. Otherwise, it’s just the story of a kid you don’t know who probably really would have died

I think that I need to do a better job visualizing conceptual questions from a 6^th grade perspective, and then attempt to create them more in line with this point of view. Practice makes perfect. 

I need to not make any excuses. If you take the bait, this profession will lend itself to constant excuses and the largest of blame games, more than any other profession I can think of. Teacher’s could blame a new influence every day, never run out of targets responsible, and never be the target themselves.

Though somehow, my final lesson came through. It wasn’t perfect from a management perspective, there was a ton of excitement with the rap, but it wasn’t too shabby. However, I swear I saw the ghost of Biggie Smalls possess a short, soft spoken sixth-grade girl.  I walked into class not expecting, but knowing, I was going to fail - yet I was in too deep to turn around. I knew they didn't get it, and would continue to not get it, it seemed like they couldn’t. Then it clicked, and they saw how a real song gets written, and they spit rhymes about their boy B. Robeson from Hatchet. I don’t think I’m supposed to share student examples on here. But I really, really, want to. I’m restraining myself.

So if I were to sum up my week, I'd say: It wasn't the tightly woven plan, but it came through in the end. There is a ton of cleanup I could have done, which I did not foresee. However, I didn't fail, and I did do something out of the ordinary. There is much to be learned, and I hope I will make the mistakes I made less frequently in the future.

Smagorinsky, P. (2008). Teaching English by design: How to create and carry out instructional units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.