Take 5---Students Get Frank

Forward and honest, I asked my senior EWL students how teachers can do a better job engaging their students and empowering them to care about their own learning. I appreciated their honest comments. Don't get me wrong; I wasn't searching for a place for students to nag about us, but they certainly told me how they feel about lectures, worksheets, definition packets and the like.

Yet, daily with eight weeks left of school, it's amazing to look around at my peers. One on one conferences, hugs in the halls, making tough phone calls home, and collaborating with each other, Arapahoe teachers are working "bell to bell." I know we are impacting their lives and that we do connect with them...just not always.

I wonder how we can do better, reach more students, get them thinking, and let go of our notions that we MUST teach this or else! Or else What? What will happen? Students imploding in the halls because they didn't get educated on poetry from the Elizabethan time period to the Post Moderns.

The following is the link to the page where my students discussed their feelings about teachers and the way we teach. The first link is for our class blog: EWL Cybercafe-- www.davisewl.blogspot.com and the second link is where they actually posted (on a student's blog) -- http://danibranham.blogspot.com/2006/03/davis-ewl-cybercafe-letting-students.html This should be printed for us to read, a reminder to do whatever we can to spark our students' thinking. I know I want to be a lifelong learner; shouldn't we want that for our students?