I am a very romantic person. I got totally swept away by Dead Poets Society as a kid because it wasn’t about “school” it seemed to be about freedom. Looking back, I’m sure it was so appealing to me because it was the antithesis of my experience in English class. I have wanted to be a teacher since I was a kid myself, and had a secret cross to bear since probably 4th grade— that I would come back as an adult and change things. It’s funny, now that I’ve begun all I care about is remembering everything we need to cover and not looking like I’m lost. At this point, I’ll take what I can get, O Captain, my Captain! Something Andrew told us has become my silent mantra: which I’m sure I have worded wrong, “It’s not what you have them do, it’s how you make them feel”. I will never forget my English 101 teacher because she was the first teacher that treated me like an adult. I was only 17 when I went to community college after dropping out of highschool, but I was shocked to discover she made eye-contact, she actually waited to hear my thoughts on something, she asked me to come to her office— and not because I was in trouble— but because she wanted to personally respond to a poem I wrote. She bolstered the spirit that Jr. High broke and, over the course of two years, turned me into a rather sassy (even kind of arrogant) writer.

Okay, okay, that probably won’t happen this year. We aren’t writing poems and I’m not that amazing yet. With this unique curriculum, my greatest hope is that I am able to show them how our work links up, how it is designed to build on itself. At the moment it seems they’re not even sure what picture they’re supposed to see, like one of those Magic Eye posters, they’re squinting their eyes at the possible dolphin-mosaic, meanwhile, I am hoping they are learning the utility of the skills we’re asking them to employ. Collaboration, attention to technical writing, expressing an idea in more than one way (visually, aurally, etc).

In the end, there isn’t always romance. I just hope they leave this class feeling capable and proud of their creations.