Saturday, September 10, 2011
My favorite writing teacher
Mr. Pries was my tenth grade English teacher. Everyday when his students entered his classroom, he would have his ipod playing for everyone to listen to as they greeted their classmates and friends. When the song ended there was silence and everyone began writing in their private journals. They would respond to the question that would be posted on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. Sometimes the question would be philosophical about life, about our assigned reading, or it would be free writing. These journals were never collected, but everyone did diligently write in them in the beginning of class. Many students even wrote in them outside of school. Once the journal writing portion of class was finished his students would stand on our chairs and do a "cheer." Mr. Pries made up many cheers that he taught his students and they of course had favorites that were recited weekly. They were always positive and upbeat, making his students ready for the class that was to come, and many students even felt prepared for the day. It may seem that these practices were a waste of time considering that they dominated the first ten minutes of class everyday, but I do not think of any class more fondly than I do of the time I spent in Mr. Pries's room. I'm sure I will mention his practices and the impact they had on me in many posts to come. But for now, I just wanted to give you a small example of my idea of a teacher who truly makes a difference.
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Sarah,
ReplyDeleteMr. Pries sounds like a really awesome guy. I love the idea of writing in journals at the beginning of class and them keeping them private. I think I want to do that within my own classroom.
Unfortunately, I absolutely hated my 10th and 11th grade English teachers. They were old and old-fashioned; there was never really discussion, only lectures and boring presentations.
My senior year, however, was the best. Mrs. Fike was by far my favorite English teacher and one of my favorite teachers overall. She actually went to Iowa and inspired me to be a high school English teacher.
I hope you and I will both get that chance to be someone's favorite teacher that they choose to write about on their blog in their education classes one day.
Looking back at all of my school years, the teachers that stand out in my mind most of all are mostly English teachers. Most of them, however, had an impression on me in relation to the literature we read, and not in relation to writing. There is one teacher, however, that stands out in my mind. In sixth grade, we actually had two English classes. One was simply called Reading and the other Language Arts. My Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Kulbom, was truly wonderful. We were encouraged to write stories about whatever we wanted and to read them aloud to the class. Somehow, quite a few of us ended up writing stories that included other people in the class and there would be recurring things in all these stories (for example, there was this kid in class who just LOVED bacon, so every story would include bacon). We would all be laughing hysterically, and Mrs. Kulbom would be laughing right along with us. She seemed to enjoy the stories as much as we did, and I think it made us all feel really good and motived us to keep writing. When you're 11/12 you really need someone that makes you feel good about your writing. Kids are really just in the very beginning stages of learning to write, and having an adult who seems to sincerely enjoy their writing that much can really drive them to keep it up.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like Mr. Pries was a lot like that. Someone who made you want to keep writing. If you can help give a student the drive to write, that's a success.
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteMr. Pries sounds like an awesome teacher and someone that has similar classroom techniques that my favorite high school English teacher, Mrs. Taylor, had. Although Mrs. Taylor did not begin each class with her IPod playing, she did begin each class with a free-write journal. Instead of writing a prompt on the board, Mrs. Taylor had a bucket full of pieces of paper, each having one random word on each piece of paper. At the beginning of each class, a different student each day would pick a piece of paper from the bucket, drawing the random word of the day. This would become the topic of the journal for this day. Having students focus on the one word to produce a journal entry, having to direct rules to follow, allowed for flexibility and creativity to emerge. Mrs. Taylor's free-write journal exercise at the beginning of each day is something that I would love to include in my future classroom.
~Keeley~
He sounds like an awesome teacher! The practice of doing private journals sounds like a good idea. I never had that experience in class. Did you/do you feel like writing more often? Did you notice whether or not your writing changed/improved over the year? It would be interesting if you kept your journals and could browse through them sometime.
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