I finished up an editing project yesterday, started a proofreading assignment, went to a yoga class, washed floors, cooked Moroccan chicken with preserved lemons and olives, sewed, fell asleep during a nature show about giraffes. Today I'll be reading essay drafts, maybe finishing the proofreading assignment, maybe switching over to my own poems.
I've been reading the closing comments about our Richard III project, and I've been thinking about how honored I am to have such persistent readers as friends. Because of the exigencies of my schedule, I had to pull back from full participation in the project. I kept planning and facilitating and commenting, but I stopped doing the writing prompts, and I felt guilty about it. Clearly, however, my guilt was a waste of energy. The readers continued to work and write with great persistence and perception, and I once again learned the teacher's lesson: I am not the most important person in the room. May that lesson stick.
1 comment:
After all my years in the classroom, I too know that the Teacher isn't the most important person in the room and is in fact one of the learners. However, a good Teacher,, that means you Dawn, is the glue that holds the classroom together. A question frequently asked in interviews: Is it better to have your students respect you or like you? The advice I have given my Pre-service teachers: it is better to have them like you for if they like you and feel you like them back they will respect and will work hard. It won't be just to please or to * earn something*, it will be a tribute to the relationship. So thank you, Dawn.
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