There are two students in particular with whom I am working in my 4th period class, Andre and Raheem. These two students remind me a lot of the kids I work with back home at Boys and Girls Club. I have heard stories from other teachers about these students regarding classroom misbehavior and disrespect. I was shocked by this because these two students are some of the most polite young men I've ever taught. Each day they walk in, greet me upon arrival, they both participate a great deal in class, and as they leave, they always tell me goodbye and to have a great day. These students lack motivation at times, especially Raheem, but they both told me that they thought it was "awesome" that we were going to be doing a lot of work in class that catered to them. They loved the interest inventories we did, and also really loved the "coat of arms: activity because it gave them a chance to express themselves artistically and through writing in order to tell me a little bit about themselves. Raheem took this activity to heart and his coat of arms was outstanding in both writing and artistically - he even took it home to finish it. One aspect of both students' lives is music - they love it, and enjoy listening to a wide variety of it. Raheem especially loves rap and hip-hop and he even has his own mixtape (meaning, he raps and has it recorded to a cd and sells his CDs). When I talked to period 4 about mixing rap and hip-hop with American literature, his eyes lit up. He and Andre both probed me with questions about what songs, which artists, what stories, how we were going to do the assignments, and I knew then that I had gotten them excited for English for the first time since high school, given the lack of enthusiasm they showed for English in their journals and on the interest surveys, reading autobiography, and coat of arms.
I have the students do daily journals, mostly free writes to give them an opportunity to express themselves, but I also assign them different writing prompts on occasion as well. Raheem is less into the journals than Andre, but they both really enjoy them and I have learned s much about them. Andre has gone above and beyond this week in his journal writing - twice he has taken his journal with him and done extra free writes when the time has permitted, just to get things off his chest. When I asked the students to do a quick write to explain their opinions on the dialogue aspect of the dialogue journals, Andre's response was that he loved them because he loved that I took the time to read his journals and actually cared enough to respond. He also said it helps him get his thoughts out of his head so that he can focus on what's going on in school that day. Raheem also stated that he loved the journals, loved the music, and "loved everything that I have done in this class, honestly!!!" Raheem also gave me 3 songs to listen to off of his mixtape, which I of course listened to, and gave him notes about them. He could not believe that I listened to the songs in the first place, and that I took the time to actually write down the lyrics that were good and my comments on them. He thanked me about 10 times in class for caring enough to actually listen, and I can tell that just that small action has impacted him in a positive way - he is trying harder on his assignments, and his class participation has increased even more in the past week. Andre is the same way, especially with journaling, but emotionally I think the journals and my comments back have really helped him a lot in the past week and will hopefully continue to do so!
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