Riane Konc’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
My students will learn to lose and then find themselves again through the existential questions of great literature. Even the most reluctant readers will discover that their closest confidantes and most intimate lovers have been waiting for them in the pages of a book. After a class discussion about Romeo and Juliet versus West Side Story, students from different socioeconomic classes will look each other in the eyes and give a brief nod of understanding. The Kid Who Everyone Thought Was Bad News will perform Sonnet 116 over a sample of “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” to a standing ovation on the last day of school, and when he’s done, the whole class will leap upon their desks and address me as O Captain, My Captain, and also none of them will ever type u instead of you in a text message again.
Okay, well, I don’t expect every student to be Harold Bloom. I mean, how many ADULTS do you know who can fully parse “The Waste Land”? I’m not looking for a full textual analysis here. Maybe one student will follow the way that World War I haunts the narrator; maybe one will pick up on the theme of existential decay; maybe another will follow the parallels between Eliot’s poem and Weston’s From Ritual to Romance. I actually like it better that way, each of them poring over bits of the poem and teasing out individual meanings, then bringing what they’ve mined back to class to share. The important thing is that they figure it out on their own.
It’s best to work through dense poems like this in class. Although several of my students did point out that April, in the poem, was symbolic of spring, which I thought was a good start. Also I think they really connected with the cruelty of the spring, because did you know the school makes them take the SAT the same month as prom AND the senior class trip, which is totally oppression? — as Chloe mentioned.
Before I blow their minds with the poetry = rap connection, we may have to have a little class discussion about what “classic rap” is, and whether the breakdown in “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift is that. Also not sure if these kids really think Jay-Z is famous for being Beyoncé’s husband, or if they’re just messing with me. Either way, we’ll table the poetry for now. They’ll be too busy soaking up the ORIGINAL young adult drama: Romeo and Juliet! Take that, Edward and Bella, that’s what they’ll be saying.
Too tired to have a discussion about time and logic and how using the two could help us decide whether Shakespeare inspired Stephenie Meyer or vice-versa. As long as they’re reading. As long as they’re reading.
Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be PERFORMED, not read, which was another really good point second period brought up. I don’t even mind playing all the parts, because it’s important to teach to audio learners in my class, which they reminded me they all are.
The 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is probably just as good as reading the play in class. I’m not a trained actress here! As a good teacher, shouldn’t I want my students to make connections between text and media? And it’s so important to be exposed to classic film. I mean, Franco Zeffirelli!
Of course, Baz Luhrmann is definitely a classic too, maybe even more of a classic. Plus the kids were right, the Zefferilli adaptation was janky and, I think, ratchet? I’m actually really excited about the way they’re exercising critical thinking skills, not afraid to go after the classics! I especially liked fourth period’s feminist critique that Leo was a way hotter Romeo than that old dude.
Sure, why not, let’s watch the 2013 version too. Damien Lewis is in it and we can stare at his creepy-ass small mouth.
You know what, IS there really so much that depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water? Even taking into account the white chickens?
Rachel’s essay comparing all three Romeo and Juliet movies made some really unexpected–and I think exciting–points, such as, “why was there a fish tank” and “if i lived in cali i don’t think i would be in such a bad mood?” I’m really interested to hear about her choice to use abbreviations like “TL;DR” in an academic paper. A sort of parallel with the movie, in essence “modernizing” her speech in the same way the Luhrmann “modernized” a classic text? Maybe a commentary on how if Romeo hadn’t been in such a hurry–if he hadn’t, in essence, bespoke a “TL;DR” on Juliet’s coma–their love might have survived? Ah, I’m giddy!
Okay, so the articles she was quoting really were too long and so she didn’t read them. Also “wtf” does not, it turns out, mean “When Tylbat falls,” and “fml” does not mean “Forget ‘Montague!’ Live!” so I may need to revisit some of her points.
Really looking forward to hearing how the kids will make connections between The Red Pony and their own lives. What emblem of childhood have THEY lost? Could be grandmothers, could be baby teeth, could be…innocence? Also that book is like 13 pages long so we should be good.
A lot of them said that the dead pony symbolized that…they’ve had horses who died. Thought this was maybe cool slang–maybe pony means innocence?–but no, actual ponies. Had no idea so many of these kids had ponies. Where are they keeping these ponies?
Starting to really chew on Brayden’s point from yesterday: on the one hand, the futility of the American Dream. On the other hand, his friend did a really funny cover of “Let It Go” and went on Ellen and she gave him an Xbox so maybe sometimes stuff just works out.
Kids ACTUALLY unclear about Osama versus Obama, not making rhetorical critique or satirizing the hyperbolic and alarmist media culture. Good to know.
Maybe before the end of the year, I can get my students to stop saying “I could care less” when they mean “I couldn’t care less.” What if they said that in a job interview? English has real-world implications.
That was really ambitious. Maybe I can just get them to stop saying “for all intensive purposes.” That’s going to get them punched someday. Maybe by me.
Honestly, if you say it fast enough, it’s impossible tell that you’re not actually saying “for all intents and purposes,” so what’s the point. But I’ll bet my teaching license I can get them to stop saying “literally” when they mean “figuratively” before the year’s up!
You know, language really does evolve. Who cares if you use “literally” the wrong way if you’re still basically a good person? It’s like I’ve always said: if I can just help my students become basically good people, then I’ll have succeeded.
Wait, I think what I actually said was that if I can help JUST ONE student become basically a good person, then I’ll have done my job. Just the one student.
Maybe I can help just one student become a marginally better person. Or not even necessarily become a better person. If I can just take a basic, standard child and not fuck him up in any large or noticeable way, then–and I don’t want to get sentimental here–but that, right there? That’s the whole reason I got into teaching in the first place.
What if I only drank on the weekend?
Okay, I can drink on weekdays, but not in the parking lot.
Okay, not in the teachers’ parking lot.
Tags: humor, riane konc, teaching
As someone that eventually wants to become an English teacher, I really enjoyed this/was filled with dread and fear by it.
I’m just going to drink my tea and pretend that the future is not a thing.
brb with something intelligent, busy dying of laughter.
My brother said his 11th grade history class couldn’t distinguish between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Girl in my 10th-grade history class: “Sir, you said earlier that Napoleon was the emperor of France, but just now you said that Bonaparte was the emperor? I’m confused, which is it?”
Also there’s that TONE in which they say “I’m confused!” like it’s the most important declaration you’ll hear all day. It’s analogous to Rudolph’s “I’m independent,” but there’s a little more upward lilt on the” -fused.”
And as if it’s almost definitely your fault for failing as a teacher somehow.
My chemistry students do the exact same thing!!! drives me crazy
Oh yes, with that tone that comes from their obvious pride at having caught the teacher out in some contradiction/inaccuracy/hypocrisy, bless them.
That’s coz they cut almost all the bloody religious strife and sexual misbehavior out of history curriculums. You need the heresies, murder and fornicating to actually understand and appreciate history, and kids can’t possibly be expected to learn about that stuff.
“Did the Mayans always speak Spanish??” Real quote.
This was in a university class………..
Well, one of them was a king, obviously.
Have you been reading my diary? Are you me?
We were reading Patrick Henry’s Speech to the Second VA Convention (“Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death”) and one student asked me, “Did we win?” The American Revoltion. Did we win.
And some think Martin Luther King Jr freed the slaves.
*actual spit-take*
Those were just the ones this year. A few years ago a student told me that Abraham Lincoln was the first African American president.
Ridiculous. Everyone knows that was Bill Clinton.
Wait, are YOU me? My midterm and end of semester grades are due this week and I am knee deep in papers. I am in technology lockdown right now because I need to finish (OMG I’M NEVER GOING TO FINISH), but allowed myself a quick internet checkin. Immediately after I read this, I went back to my pile o’ papers and found this gem:
When slavery existed, did Martin Luther King sit down and watch?
Time Traveling MLK! Is there anything he can’t do?
I know a girl who thought Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks existed in the same time period/could not really tell the two apart. upon further research, told me she thinks Parks, MLK + Malcolm X “would have been in some kind of tight peace gang” together…!
Oh man, yes to all of this. My husband is a teacher and I have no idea how he survives. I want to write a similar post about parenting these dirtbags, but currently I just have little dirtbags-in-training.
This explains how my eleventh grade English class transitioned from “read Native Son over the summer and write essays due the first day of class” to “pick one of these books and do a group project,” and one of the books was Stargirl.
They’re right about William Carlos Williams, though.
This is completely marvelous. Thank you!
This was hilarious, thank you.
I’m teaching English as a foreign language right now and at the beginning of the year I was like, “Maybe I can have them read and discuss some intro texts on feminism!”
Now I’m like, “Maybe they’ll learn to say ‘she was’ instead of ‘she were’! Just once! That would be so great!”
I work in a writing center with a very large number of English as a second language learners and I feel this in the depths of my tired soul. But they’re just so willing to learn that I can’t feel overly-frustrated with them, like I am with the people who have been speaking English all their lives, are no longer in introductory writing courses, and still confuse “she were” instead of “she was.”
Same. I work in a writing center and the ESL students are very passionate and enthusiastic. Also, the adult ESL students are very aware of the fact that they are perceived as stupid by some people, and are frustrated that they can’t articulate the complexity of their thoughts (one woman I remember breaking down in tears saying that in Saudi Arabia she won awards for her poetry but here she is forced into “childish thoughts,” which surprised me as we were only working on a resume.) So I have a lot of respect for adult immigrants, and I try to let that grant me patience to explain the same verb-tense lesson five times, because of how freeing fluency is and how limited vocabulary can make a person feel trapped.
Whereas with native English speakers…I mean, I *get* that some grew up in poor neighborhoods, or maybe they have a learning disability…but many seem just so uncurious. Or shallow. I dunno, it just frustrates me so much more. Like, in contrast to the woman who is in tears because she cannot express herself intelligently to her friends, these native English speakers couldn’t care less about their writing or speech.
My writing center people! I did this all through undergrad, and I think it’s made me a much better teacher (with much more realistic expectations) than I would have been otherwise.
Maybe they’ll learn to distinguish between she and he and not mix them up!!!
‘My mother do teacher. He very like.’
AAAAAHHH (but funny, really, and they are very enthusiastic, plus I say stupid shit to them in Mandarin all the time. Mandarin – a language where if you get the tone wrong you say ‘vagina’ when you meant to say ‘pen’).
Oh god. “Very like”. I’m getting flashbacks. It was my one I-will-die-upon-this-hill issue with all my students (who were old/advanced enough to know better). REALLY. REALLY REALLY REALLY. *froths*
And don’t forget that Pen can be vagina can be a basic comparative particle! *dies* That said, I absolutely love the fact that some things are just amazingly simple. Of COURSE Bigsmall means size!
Literally just this morning I said to a coworker, “I gave a crash course in literary theory today. I think that the second section will probably remember that ‘man-hater’ is sometimes used as slang for ‘lesbian.'” And that was my success today.
(Arguably this is my fault for deludedly thinking that if I’m supposed to send freshmen to JSTOR for research, I should teach them what “feminist” and “Marxist” mean first.)
I also tried to talk about the lesbian gaze today and I’m afraid I did the “Reassuring” Excessive Eye Contact thing with the few confirmed queer folk in the classroom who aren’t me when I talked about queer women, which was straight-up shitty of me but I don’t keep track of my eye contact patterns unless I’m talking about something difficult, so I know it gets stupid and performative and I don’t know what to dooooo.
(This being my way of saying that every word of this piece resonated deeply and provoked Wry Faces of Understanding. Thank you for improving the day.)
Ahh I just did the same thing today in a lecture about cultural appropriation and Classical Antiquity. Still feeling jittery with awkwardness…
Right? Like, on some level I know it’s the price I pay for the dubious privilege of being a baby academic to feel awkward (oh noes!), but I want to do it right and I’m so aware of the consequences if I get it wrong.
Solidarity, fellow Teacher of Theory to First-Years. Just keep hammering at it and eventually some of it will dribble into some unexamined corner of their brains and then when one of them’s a senior taking gender studies classes you will feel a tiny bit vindicated.
And oh god the “Reassuring” Excessive Eye Contact and the self-conscious performativity. I’m sorry, but that never gets better.
Girl in my Grade 12 English literature class : “Mr. Teacher, can’t we do something today that doesn’t involve reading… or writing… or discussing?”
Can we have class outside today?
april is the cruellest month!
This is the truest thing I have ever read, goddamnit.
A fellow student in my high school drama class made a mock set design for “Julius Cesar” which included two giant eyes staring down on everyone because “you know, the Eyes of March.”
Seriously laughing at this. My 3 year keeps asking me what’s funny, but I am not a classical teacher and since it doesn’t translate to Curious George, he won’t understand. But hilarious. Eyes of March! Thanks for sharing.
this is too good and reminds me of the one and only time i ever participated in cheating.
we read conrad’s “heart of darkness” and started off the class with a quiz—questions that involved no critical thinking but just checked that we had indeed read the material. the girl next to me motioned me to help her with one of the questions: “what were kurtz’ last words?” and i admit, i mouthed silently to her, “the horror.”
she ended up writing down “the whore,” and the professor was definitely a little confused.
That would have made the novel far more interesting.
I got an F on my Heart of Darkness Paper. An F. I have never forgiven Conrad for that base betrayal.
Not cheating related, but Heart of Darkness related… picture an AP Literature & Composition class, senior year, Socratic seminar as a first semester final. Senior class president is asked a question, his answer somehow goes downhill and ends with the greatest bit of literary wisdom I have ever heard: “I mean, it’s the Heart of Darkness… it’s not, like, The Single Tree of Darkness.”
We had a lot of fun with “the horror”/”the whore” jokes in my high school English class, too. Especially when the narrator tells Kurtz’s wife that his last words were “your name.” Hilarity!
OMG, Julius Caesar/Great Gatsby mashup. You know it would be amazing.
When I was on the staff of my college paper I once had to edit a story in which the writer kept referring a book called “Warren Peace”. (Warren Peace immediately became the poor girl’s permanent behind-the-back nickname in our office, because we were assholes.)
Ex- Classics teacher, and I am pretty sure that, ‘at least I probably didn’t f*ck them up’ was my mantra by the end of my teaching career. And the lofty goal of transforming conversations on wonderful texts became hoping that they would read the actual texts, became hoping they would watch the documentary on it, became hoping they would at least pretend to watch it in silence, please? *goes home and drinks*
Good teachers are amazing and underrated – I have much sympathy for you all!
I tutored high school English while at uni, gave up when I got an irate phone call from an English teacher demanding to know why one of my students had answered the exam question “How does Shakespeare explore the theme of ‘love’ in Romeo and Juliet?” (or similar) with a three page essay about why people are such h8rs about Twilight.
Oliver Stonewall Jackson Five for Fighting may be the greatest cat name ever.
Hold on, you mean the texts being read in an American high school English class don’t always directly relate to the events currently transpiring in the students’ lives?
ALL FILM AND TV HAS BEEN A LIE.
When we did Romeo and Juliet at school, one of my classmates wrote an essay containing a sentence that started “When Romeo sees Juliet through the fish tank…” and I can still remember the look of utter bewilderment on my teacher’s face.
I teach Latin at a classical home school co-op, and this is the part of the year where my goals start devolving, too. It’s also the part of the year when I start getting emails from parents about why I need to make exceptions for their kid because THEIR kid is a Special Snowflake. I am in a blizzard of Special Snowflakes, and this article has made me so happy.
My high school was… basically a prep school for the clever but weird. The problem is that most people are more clever in one area or another, so if you’re one of the people in graduating class of 35, the students who go on to PhDs in pure math (2 so far) or chemistry (5? plus a few MAs), are not necessarily as committed to literature and history. Which brought us to senior year English, where literally half the class thought that when Nabokov talked about the butterflies that he’d caught and mounted as a child, he was talking about sexual mounting, and that they had found the metaphor. Half the class kept asking if it was a dream sequence or if he was high, while the other half just kept looking at their text, confused that they might have, uncharacteristically, missed something.
“I…don’t understand this. At least, I think so; I don’t actually know what that feels like. Is this what it feels like, to not understand?”
Oh — oh god. I taught English 101 and 102 at a public university for two years. “I don’t have to know how to write! I’m a business major!” I have to say, my non-native speakers were often the best students. They wrote better papers than many of their American peers, tried harder, and often had better grammar. And if they didn’t, they were usually very interested in improving. By the end of the semester, I was usually just focused on making sure nobody, including myself, set fire to the classroom.
You may be saying that hyperbolically, but in 12th grade English class, we had to do some kind of artistic interpretation of Jane Eyre, and some guy friends of mine decided to do an interpretive dance with one of them in drag in a cage of PVC pipes while smoke swirled around, and the hot plate they were using to warm the dry ice did, in fact, light the carpet on fire. So no fires is a real accomplishment!
There aren’t enough likes for this anecdote.
Looks like your English students are also my intro to physical chemistry students!
I lost it at: “If I can just take a basic, standard child and not fuck him up in any large or noticeable way, then–and I don’t want to get sentimental here–but that, right there? That’s the whole reason I got into teaching in the first place.”
I teach kindergarten — opposite end of the spectrum — and yet I feel this so hard.
okay, so one time in high school english our professor had us choose a poem and we had to lead a class discussion. One I picked was admittedly kind of difficult – honestly I did some googling to get a handle on it for my preparation. Anyways, I’ve always kind of been like, Oh I messed up that assignment, like, “Man, I should have been more prepared/done better/been more specific, led them to it” because basically just, no one had any clue. But now reading this, my main takeaway is, “God damn it, that son of a bitch English teacher KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN”. He was kind of an asshole, too.
Bless you guys, though, cause it ain’t easy.
Man, I don’t even teach English classes, I just teach religious school a couple hours a week, and I feel your pain. The other day another teacher looked over at me and was like “I haven’t killed anyone today!” and so I said “But it’s been less than an hour so far.” She responded, “I don’t care. Nobody’s dead. I want a cookie.”
I kind of had to agree with that on an emotional level, you know?
<quiet sobbing interspersed with maniacal laughter>
Did you know that Shakespeare’s plays are very dramatic? I know because nearly every paper I’ve ever read on this subject has informed me.
Also, EVERYONE STOP ASSIGNING ROMEO AND JULIET TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. Just because it’s about 14-year-olds does not mean that actual 14-year-olds can get at what’s interesting about it. Caesar, Macbeth, Titus, Midsummer’s, Hamlet if you really must–that’s plenty.
I have never understood that. Age is required to understand how nuts the play is. This is not a romantic story children! Don’t teach the 14 year olds that killing yourself for love is a grand romantic (if tragic) gesture.
I learned last semester that throughout history, there have been many cultures, societies, and religions. I also learned that many cultures have mythology. And that Zeus is a god who appears in many myths (but that often his name is spelled “Zesus”).
I have to say, I had a lot of fun with Romeo and Juliet in the 9th grade, but then I was one of the weird kids who went and signed up for the elective Shakespeare class in 11th grade.
(Macbeth in 11th grade English was ALSO amazing, because we borrowed my friend’s dad’s video-recording equipment (and he was a cameraman for NBC or something) and spent a Dayquil-and-Slimfast-fueled afternoon filming the prophecy scene and the one boy in the group played both Macbeth and Hecate (and as Hecate, stuffed my friend’s bra with apples and cotton balls, and I later ate one of the apples, because other than the cans of Slimfast, there really wasn’t any food). And for some inexplicable reason said boy actually had Final Cut on his computer and somewhere there are still DVDs of this. With outtakes. Also in 10th grade I was the only girl in our group when we did a Catcher in the Rye film project, so I had to play Sunny, the prostitute, and we pulled a fake-out by having the camera go to my legs as I pulled my dress up – and then we put the cap on the camera and finished the scene just sitting on the bed, reading the dialogue off the page. We were exceedingly proud of ourselves, because, you know, 15-year-olds.)
I don’t love Sassy Gay Friend in general, but I do enjoy this exchange:
Juliet: I love him.
Sassy Gay Friend: You love him? You met him Sunday! It’s barely Thursday morning. Slow down, crazy, slow down.
Juliet: Love makes you crazy.
Sassy Gay Friend: Yeah, I would say so. ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Translation: ‘Desperate, desperate, I am really desperate. Are there any stalkers on my grounds?’
Juliet: I’m a grown woman.
Sassy Gay Friend: I think you’re fourteen, and you’re an idiot. You took a roofie from a priest. Look at your life, look at your choices. Have you even slept with this guy?
Juliet: …I did.
Sassy Gay Friend: …You big slut, good for you!
This article is a perfect combination of funny and sad.
Oh this is so familiar.
“Identify all stages of the hero cycle and relate them to the text”
“Identify six”
“Identify three”
“Read. Just read these two pages.”
(Weeps openly into hands).
When I started University I declared my intention to become a highschool math teacher. Several extended family members, who are teachers, were very emphatic in their discouragement. I went into Accounting instead. I regret nothing.
This is so true it’s hard to read.
I remember when I started teaching, I was so scornful of one of my colleagues who created and played Jeopardy style games in his art history class. OMG. That did NOT meet my high standards of intellectual rigor. And then I started teaching History of Graphic Design. I naively believed that my students would come in ready to discuss the finer points of Art Nouveau, and get excited about Russian Constructivism. That first term was painful for all of us.
And now, guess what? I freaking LOVE design jeopardy. Best study aid ever. And the most popular thing I ever did in that class. One of my former students was so excited to tell me about the grad class that he took where everyone had to design a lesson plan and lead it for their class – his included jeopardy and it was very successful.
This is so true it's hard to read.
I remember when I started teaching, I was so scornful of one of my colleagues who created and played Jeopardy style games in his art history class. OMG. That did NOT meet my high standards of intellectual rigor. And then I started teaching History of Graphic Design. I naively believed that my students would come in ready to discuss the finer points of Art Nouveau, and get excited about Russian Constructivism. That first term was painful for all of us.
And now, guess what? I freaking LOVE design jeopardy. Best study aid ever. And the most popular thing I ever did in that class. One of my former students was so excited to tell me about the grad class that he took where everyone had to design a lesson plan and lead it for their class – his included jeopardy and it was very successful.
After this made the rounds (in a single afternoon — you could hear the hoots of laughter and tell who had just opened email), I think our new department goals are going to include the words, “Okay, not in the teachers’ parking lot,” if only because the apostrophe is placed correctly. For all intensive purposes.
My partner's brother (late 30s) thought that maybe dragons had actually existed, and was hurt when we all laughed at him. He also claimed not to really understand what eggs were.
Argh, one of my great pet peeves…. “I could care less” IS the correct phrasing; it’s just an abbreviation of the whole, original phrase. The original phrase was “I could care less if I cared more.”
Citation required.
All of the Reasons Why I Let my Teaching Credential Lapse.
How did you get inside my brain?
But teaching is and remains the best job I’ve ever had. Just don’t try to hold them to the standards your college professors held you to or that you’ve seen in horrible, inspirational movies and you’ll be good to go.
I taught for only two years (high school) but it was enough. No profession drives a human adult to drink more than teaching.
All teachers are medicated or self medicating. Which other profession has it’s own alcohol ? ( Teacher’s Scotch)
I thought I was the only one trying to only drink on the weekends… or at least not in the parking lot. Damn.
Oh, so that’s why our AP Literature class only read poems if they were written by Robert Frost! I’m sure that was very helpful in keeping the teacher’s expectations of our analytical abilities low.
I mean, not that I don’t like Frost, but if you’re only going to teach one poet, and all you’re going to do is have students sit in groups and discuss what the poems “mean” and whether there are metaphors, I think there might be some less stunningly boring choices available to you.
There is really nothing that Shakespeare or all those other boring old dudes have written that even compares to the searing insight of Tupac and Biggie Smalls, you know. As a teacher I’ve learned just so much from my students, perhaps even more than they’ve learned from me! It’s the beauty of inquiry-based learning, differentiated to each student’s particular learning style.
In some cases, students are unable to move up a grade if they can’t grasp the math-related concepts that are being taught in school. You probably don’t want to see your kid get held back in school, but you might need to help him or her pull up some grades first. Luckily, a math tutor can help ensure that your child understands the concepts being taught in class so that he or she is ready to transition to another grade next year.
This made me lol. PS, I majored in English.
This made me lol. PS, I majored in English.
Well, one of them was a king, obviously.
I don’t have the patience (or the liver) to be a teacher. I’m in college right now, and one person in my science class actually said that if we don’t stop global warming, the planet will explode. It about made my HEAD explode, and I’m sure that’s not even the worst thing that was said all semester.
In many schools, the obvious disconnect from the advanced world, and the space of learning is getting prohibited. The obvious fact behind this is ‘funding’ no doubt, but it is actually ‘a bit more complicated than that’. Prior to, and accompanying the current changes in syllabus and curriculum, the teaching methods have gone through under several ‘mini revolutions’ for last few decades. <a href=”http://www.abovegradelevel.ca” target=”_blank”>www.abovegradelevel.ca
I teach English at a community college. I love my job and I care about my students. But this essay has made me cry with laughter on no fewer that four occasions as it keeps coming across my FB feed. You have written a classic, Ms. Konc.