No Photobombing

I am in day three of my school year. Last year, I had the great opportunity to attend the NCTE conference. Jeff Anderson and his colleagues gave an amazing session about Transcending Your Teaching. One idea that has stuck with me is the idea the notion of not letting anyone photobomb our teaching. So far this year there has been a lot of photo bombing potentially happening in my classroom.

What sticks with me and how I transcend outside influences in my classroom is when I am sitting in front of my students conferring and teaching with them. It is their struggles with writing that help me be a better teacher. I teach students to improve their writing. This is my mission as a teacher.

Wherever their skills are, whether I meet them in my AP Lang class or my Writing Lab class, I will move them as writers. They will improve their writing, for this is what I do. This means that I transcend whatever comes at me. I talk to students to help them come to a place of comfort. I meet with students to push them beyond what they previously knew was possible.

Nothing will get in the way of this mission.

A Salute to my Students This Year

I work to help my students become better writers. Where ever they stand in any given moment as writers, I will move them to become better, to be more persuasive, to add more power to their writing than they did before they came to me. That is my sole mission as a teacher, and I deliver.

When people do things to get in the way of this mission, not only do I feel frustration, I feel anger. I feel that there are enough things in the world getting in the way of children. I feel there are enough people in the world who put obstacles in front of kids, especially those who struggle. I will not be one of those people.

Here's a salute to my students this year, for despite what anyone has said or alluded to them in the past about their writing skills explicitly or implicitly, they will improve.

Not Forgotten

 Today is the one-year  anniversary of the day I found out about the death of one of my favorite students who graduated four years ago. Kenna Egbune was a light in my life. He was a shining beacon of justice and was an advocate for people to treat others more kindly.

In my AP Lang class today we talked about the paradox of cartography: the idea that when maps are created, they are merely a representation of the place; they are not the place itself. In order to create a perfect depiction of a place, one must include each blade of grass, each brick, etc.

The students asked, "What about memories? Aren't memories kind of like that?" I had to think before I answered. I thought of Kenna. The last time we met was for dinner in August 2012  with some other students from his class. He challenged one of the black girls at the table who said she would only date white men. Kenna pointed out to her how she was not comfortable in her own skin, in her own black skin. His directness caught everyone off guard, most of all the friend sitting across from him.

It is this directness, his fearlessness in the face of social justice that I most remember about Kenna. But this memory is not the man. I can remember his essence, his ability to fight for  GLBTQ rights, for people of color, his passion for justice, but this is not the man he was. This is merely the essence of this person who touched me so deeply.

The paradox though, sitting at the table that evening is that this memory, this point in time, will live forever through the people who were sitting with him that night. Kenna made all of us think. Kenna made all of us stop our lives in that moment and  wonder what it might be like if we were all happy in our own skin, what the world might be like.

This was the essence of who Kenna Egbune was. He changed me, and for that I am grateful.