student+sense+of+self


 * "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." -Ralph Waldo Emerson **


 * High school necessarily overflows with activity. Halls fill and empty, bells ring, lockers open and slam shut, metal bleacher seats clank as people get up and sit down or walk across them. The lunch room, teacher's lounge, administrative offices, and classrooms house conversation and movement. Within this environment, amidst this noise or the silence of test-taking or painstakingly long teacher lectures, students ages 14 to 18 spend around 8 hours a day, 5 days a week going through mandatory motions that make them part of the noise. **


 * My goal as a teacher is to enable students to gain a sense of self within that noise so that they can feel grounded within daily activities and ultimately so that they enter the adult world with an appreciation of who they are as that identity develops and solidifies. **


 * I challenge students to connect themselves and their experiences to the texts. For example, what experiences do they have reminiscent of //Walden//? How can those experiences improve today's world? What can we learn from Thoreau, or why does a man distancing himself from modernity matter in a world where Twitter, Facebook, and our reliance on cell phones feed our need to constantly connect to the world? **


 * If students leave my classroom with more questions than answers and a desire to answer these questions not just about class material but about themselves and the world, I will have succeeded in using a simple mandatory English class to show students how much more they are than additional high school noise. **