I sat in the back of high school classrooms for four straight years: head down, head phones running through my sleeves into the palm of my hand, hiding the music, book hidden behind a folder, nodding my head in order to appear engaged. These were the signals that I was sending to my teachers, engage me, but I was largely ignored. Years later I see education as a two way street in which students and teacher are holding an open dialogue in which both are learning. I am drawn to teaching in an effort to find students who are repeating the same behaviors that I displayed years ago, so that I can be the teacher who reached out to them and engage them in the way I wanted to be engaged. Students need a teacher who is willing to listen to them. The profession of teaching is a life-long career in which the practitioner is constantly fine-tuning and reflecting on prior lessons. When teachers fail to listen to the constant data their students are providing them in the form of subtle behaviors they limit their growth and development as an effective teacher.
In a similar vein, students do not care about what you teach unless you introduce the content to them in an engaging way that they perceive as applicable to their own lives and community. As a result, content instruction will vary as I listen to my students and learn how each classroom prefers to learn: group work, Socratic seminars, debates, lectures, multirepresentations of the text, Readers Theater, creative writing, and community referenced instruction. I want students to leave my class with a love of language and literature appropriate for their personal goals. I want students to see the beautiful efficiency of a six word story and the influence of a well-oiled speech. I want students to see literature as a mirror that reflects society not only during a particular period of time in place, but as a guidebook to the human condition and the inherent frailties that woe mankind.