You guys, we all feel it. Even those of us lucky enough to teach in more skill-centered (rather than content-centered) fields. It’s the push-pull of SO MUCH TO COVER AND SO LITTLE TIME. Every choice to slow down for a longer conversation feels like a cost-benefit analysis.
“If we do this poem then we won’t have time to finish that novel.”
“If we engage in that peer review article we will have to cut that particular unit.”
“Will they be prepared not to embarrass themselves in college if we don’t do a review on sentence fluency?”
“That Vocabulary.com activity is so great, but it will rush our final two group presentations.”
So I was chatting with Jen Whitt at our favorite time of the week, Tuesday afternoon middle school carpool and I happened to mention the fact that we were finishing The Things They Carried. “You know I worked at the Smithsonian, right?” Jen said. “I can share about the Vietnam War Memorial.” We were behind all the things in the class, but I didn’t skip a beat because, unlike my young teacher self, I’ve learned that the things we don’t plan for often tend to be the best things of all.
“YES!” I said.
Jen showed up to Block 7 after break and commenced to share the most beautiful, informative presentation.
Not only did she educate my students on a memorial most of them hadn’t seen (sidenote: we need a class trip to DC!), she ended with some incredible personal stories from her father and his war friends.
I saw David Bramlett hanging outside the window at the end of the class. Jen whispered, “David has a ton he could share too from his perspective!” DBram as a class visitor? I couldn’t resist!
The following week David gifted me us, not just with an incredible slideshow of family images and stories, but also artifacts that made his time with us feel more like a traveling museum exhibit than a quick presentation. Even with emotions still raw from a loss in the family, he opened up his heart and his storytelling to a class that was so uncharacteristically silent you could hear a pin drop.
This is a story about the generosity of spirit of incredible colleagues who gave up their precious free time to plan and share their stories.
This is a story about slowing down and giving up the planned pace of a class schedule to bring a novel to life.
This is a story about all of the times I have forgotten to ask colleagues if they could share.
This is a story about all of the times I haven’t offered to share my own time and stories with colleagues and student.
This is a story about stories. The way that we can lecture and do brilliant things with our students, but the minute we say “let me tell you a thing that happened to someone I love” we as humans are suddenly primed to listen.
Once the stories started, of course, the floodgate was hard to stop. Students stopped me before or after class to tell me something their great grandfather had experienced. Our discussions of The Things We Carried took on a new life after that.
All because of the amazing Jen and David, and the permission I gave myself to let go of class time.