Student Teaching - Week #6

by Kristin Trease - Kelvyn Park High School

Life in the City

I’m an artsy person. If you want to know about the latest Bears game, read a different blog. You won’t find any posts about that from me. Maybe I’m missing out on a huge part of Chicago culture, but I’m really, really okay with my play going, museum visiting, concert attending culture.

Last Wednesday night I went to see the Tony Award-winning play, “Spring Awakening” at DePaul University. Here is some helpful advice: make sure that when you come out of a subway stop, you are actually walking south on State (or whatever direction and street you need), because if you aren’t you may just keep walking, looking for Balbo, and you will never find it. Another helpful tip, ask for directions. Most people are willing to help. And then, walk really fast. If you’re lucky, you’ll make it to the theatre two minutes before the play starts, early enough to catch your breath and have your friend laugh at you a little bit.

Spring Awakening

Also a helpful tip when going to see shows, do a quick Wikipedia search of the show you’re going to see. It’s helpful to have some kind of idea what you’re walking into. “Spring Awakening” was a good show, but I was not expecting to see so much…skin. Let me share with you the moral of the play: give your daughter the talk, because if you don’t, she’ll have sex, not knowing that’s how one gets pregnant. Then you’ll be forced to ship off the boyfriend to a reformatory and get her an under the table abortion, during which she dies.  Before you’ll know it, you’ll be daughterless, all because you kept insisting the stork was responsible for babies. Oh, also Germany in the 1860’s was no walk in the park.

Life in the Classroom

I’m beginning to realize I have really, really high expectations. Not that high expectations are bad for students – it’s really important for them to know you are holding them up to high standards. However, when planning a lesson on free verse poetry, I expected all students to write their poems excitedly for fifteen minutes, then be dying to share them with the class. My expectations are way out of hand.

Not that my poetry lesson was a failure; on the contrary, it went really, really well. I was amazed at the kind of poems I read afterwards. I was also really irritated when I searched some fishy sounding ones and found songs on YouTube. Teenagers…

What it made me realize most was this: often times students don’t get the chance to say what they need to say. I really wish I could have shared with you some of the poems that were written. For a group of fifteen year olds, there is a lot of heart break and strength sitting in those desks every day. And I am so, so thankful to hear the stories. I am also aware of how ill-equipped I am to deal with any of it. My job is merely to listen and help in the ways I can, and getting more help for the things I can’t help with. I’m trying to be okay with that role.