Great educator and leader of radical scholarship!
Possibly my greatest commitment while teaching public school English in a rural SC high school for 18 years was listening to my students, and by that, I do not mean listening to them during class discussions or in conferences (I did that also).
I mean listening to students when they didn’t know an adult was listening.
Some of those moments that have shaped my teaching include the following:
- Student comment: A student walking into class told a friend that she had just failed a pop quiz in the previous class after studying all night, and from then on, she wasn’t going to waste her time studying. My lesson: Pop quizzes often taught students the exact wrong lessons intended; thus, I very early on never gave pop quizzes (leading eventually to giving no tests, for similar reasons).
- Student comment: Two students were leaving my class once at the end of…
View original post 1,023 more words
aureliomontemayor 