I find myself, after three weeks of teaching, in a little bit of a rut. I could not have been prepared for how much these students would challenge me as a teacher. Somehow, I need to reconfigure how this class operates. My classroom is an academic church, just as a family is a domestic church. Just as the Holy Church is a hospital for the recovering and a gymnasium for athletes, so also must my classroom be.
That's a tough order, because I don't have the luxury of dividing my classes into "honors" and standard curricula, and moreover, there's the bugbear of doubt and irrelevancy which haunts at least a quarter of each classroom and typically spills over a bit during my Socratic Seminar days.
You can lead a horse to water. For a high school religion teacher, the horses have already been led--not a few, forcefully--and am both educator and advertiser for the whole lot. Take a drink! It's delicious, nutritious, and anyway, it makes life worth living. But I'm a lone voice in that area, more often than not. It's difficult to help one appreciate the vitality of water when one is already attached to those crazy energy drinks.
I think I know what needs to happen. I'll report back later.
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