First Period English Class Last Friday

Eighteen years ago, I had my first full-time job teaching eighth-grade reading and writing in Woodstock, Illinois. It only lasted a year. All first-year teachers were let go at the end of the year due to budgetary issues. It was just as well. Even though the principal and my fellow teachers all gave me positive feedback, I gave myself a fair rating at best. The bottom line is I was barely out of school, and –to be honest- not quite ready to take on a reading and writing class of my own. I was young to say the least.

But that was almost two decades ago. I got a little side tracked teaching math and social studies for the last fifteen years. But now here in Hong Kong, I’ve had the chance to return to my first love: reading and writing.

Last Friday, I took my twenty-five first-period English students down to the computer lab. They opened up their school email accounts and pulled up the emails that I had sent to each of them the night before. Each of their emails contained my comments and suggestions about the stories they had been working on.

Each student opened up his or her short stories on the computer and started re-working and improving them.

Natalie is a great writer, but I had suggested to her that the resolution to her story comes too easy. Once the miscommunication is cleared up, the characters’ lives get back on track as if nothing had happened. I suggested that she could make her good story great by having the character irreversibly changed by the misunderstanding that happens in the middle of the story. Their relationship would end up slightly different; better, but different.

I had typed a note to Nathanael reminding him to stick with the past tense (“she sang”). He kept switching to the present tense (“I hammer”). I also complemented him on his mostly successful effort to inject real humor into his stories.

I wrote to Nick that he does a really good job with his written descriptions, but I also suggested to him that he convert some portions of his story into dialog so that we the readers feel as though we are there as the action unfolds. I also pointed out that he needs to watch out for over-use of the ALL CAPS and exclamation points!!!

As students got to work, I wheeled up and down the aisle in my teacher chair consulting with various students. I asked them what changes they were considering. Some of them thought my insights and suggestions were really helpful. Some of them asked me to clarify what I had meant by this comment or that comment in my email.

As I looked around the room, they were all deeply engaged in writing. A few students were flipping back and forth between my email comments and their current draft of their story. Some of them were glancing toward the ceiling as they considered where to go next with their writing. A few of them were discussing various aspects for their writing with their neighbor.

I stepped back and stood in the doorway for a minutes and watched them all busily writing and re-writing.

I realized that this 55-minutes English class was almost two decades in the making.

When you stumble, you have got to get back up again, even if it takes you twenty years to do so.

-Jack