"I've learned that I still have a lot to learn." - Maya Angelou

Week Four.

Challenge Writing Tasks.




Drafts pictured above. Slightly less drafty drafts typed below.



I.

With “Here’s What ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ Can Teach You About Life”  as a mentor text, here’s my own
“Five Things A Semester of College as an English Education Major Can Teach You About Life.”

In the wise words of Theodore Roosevelt, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
You will never be the very best at everything, or maybe not even the very best at anything. You’ll exhaust yourself trying. You have to be the very best you. You have your own thing going for you. Don’t compare that to what someone else has going for them- you may lose sight of your own abilities by lusting for theirs. It goes the other way, too- you never know who’s wishing they had what you have.
I am a very excitable person. I always find myself watching these beautifully calm people accomplish amazing things because of their confident composure. I think, wow, it must be so great to be so chill. Yet, after teaching a class in my loud, excited way, a peer came up to me and said, “You’re just like my favorite teacher. I wish I could be like you.”
(From my "Shakespeare in the Classroom" course.)


There's usually a reason.
Books, and not just those of the "happily ever after" variety, show the patterns in real life that are so difficult to see from in the midst of it all. 
KING HENRY IV
O God! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times.
(Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, Part 2)

You're never the only one.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” (Ian Maclaren). This includes me, and this includes you, reader. But neither of us faces battles or trials that no one else has experienced or is experiencing. Memoirs show this most poignantly as they frequently detail the author's most challenging moments. In memoirs particularly, we can see that our experiences are shared. In seeing our own "hard battles" written, we see that we're not alone. And if they can do it, so can you. 
Less beautifully, we English education majors watch our peers share our immediate struggles.
“Have you started this paper?”
“No, have you?”
“I haven’t started either!”
(From pretty much any English class ever taken.)

There is nothing like the honesty of children.
This speaks for itself.

Go with the flow.
In teaching and in life, plan for things not to go as planned. Flexibility is paramount to survival: be willing to bend or see yourself broken. Take things as they come and just go with it.
"This “final” edition of our lesson plan learned from both theoretical and “real” runs.
In Mr. B's class November 18th, we flew into the chaos of a “severe thunderstorm” and corresponding severe weather drill, but salvaged a landing, even if it wasn’t our destination of completed performances."
(From my “Shakespeare in the Classroom” reflection on revising lesson plans.)


II.

Reflection on a teaching placement. 

Drive a few moments- moments, not miles- past the over-priced coffee shops and the high-end grocery store, and nestled inexplicably between apartments and restaurants is _________ Middle School. The kids that go here almost certainly couldn't buy coffee from that shop just a few minutes' walk and if they went into that nice grocery store, everyone would know they just didn't belong. The world of nice things isn't for them. No, they're of ceiling tiles missing, broken, discolored in the hall, of uncertain smells and questionable stains on the wall. Theirs are the parents who enter the school, stomping, bewildered baby on their hip as they howl, scream, and swear at their child. The mom paying too much for organic fruit just a few minutes away would never do that, would never even look at the mother yelling here. She wouldn't recognize this mother's love, tangled up in fear, because when you look a certain way, you just can't do that, the rules are different for you, it's a dangerous place when you look the way you do. Because when the kids here go out there, they're too easy to overlook unless they're loud, in which case just punish these children because childhood is a luxury meant only for the privileged who can buy expensive coffee and afford organic food.


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