Magic Moments in the Classroom

After a slow start to this year, the last few weeks have been so much better. I like to call it classroom magic. (Magic because it just happens. I can't really plan it.)

Magic Moment #1:
Students read part of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and then searched for ten photos that showed people enjoying those rights or people denied those rights. (One student took it a bit further and showed people protesting for those rights.)
   
The next part of the assignment was to merge slides with a classmate. Together, they searched for a song that shared the theme of their photos and turned it into a musical slideshow.
     
To say that these were powerful would be an understatement. "The Sound of Silence" by Disturbed, "Imagine" by John Lennon, and Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" and "We Are the World" were just some of the songs backing some pretty haunting images.
     
Magic. (It didn't hurt that the students were pretty proud of their work.)

Magic Moment #2:
My classes memorize "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrea for Veterans Day. We study the structure, rhythm, and rhyme of the poem, but mainly we study the significance of the poem for Veterans.  Tiny Town High has a close relationship with the military in our community and many military kids attend our school.
     
Anyway, the students have been practicing the poem daily. Today, I had my classes on the stage in my room for another activity. When they finished that assignment, I had them recite the poem in a darkened room with only the stage lights. There was a haunting quality to this every hour, but 7th hour gave me chills.
       
My small 7th hour class has nine boys and no girls. These young men gathered in a tight group and this is part of what they recited:
       
   "We are the dead, short days ago
          We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
             Loved and were loved, and now we lie
                In Flanders Fields.
     Take up our quarrel with the foe,
            To you from failing hands we throw
                 The torch, be yours to hold it high
                    If ye break faith with us who die
                       We shall not sleep though poppies grow
                           In Flanders Fields."

Those nine young men could have been the soldiers of the past and some will be the soldiers of the future. Those youthful faces made the poem so much more significant. I don't know about them, but I will never forget that moment.

I'd like to think that I control the magic in my classroom, but I don't. I think magic just happens, and these are the moments we teach for.

The Sun Goes Down On Summer

For the past fifteen years or so, I have been sharing this poem with the sophomores on the first day of school. I think the author was a junior in high school when he wrote it.

The Sun Goes Down on Summer
 by Steve Lawhead

I come to the water one last time as the sun goes down on summer.
It's going; I can feel it slip away, and it leaves a cold empty spot
a hole in my warm memories of endless golden days
and dreams as ripe as watermelons.
I'd give the world to make the summer stay.

The water is calm around me.
It's a warm, silent sea of thought dyed in the rich blues of night and memory.
Why can't things just stay the way they are?

Instead, the days rush headlong into change
and I feel like nothing's ever going to be the same.
Soon school will start again.
And all the things I thought I'd left behind will come back,
and it won't be gentle water I'll be swimming in---

It'll be noise and people and schedules and passes
 and teachers telling everyone what to do.
One more year of homework, tests and grades.
Of daily popularity contests and pressure-cooker competition
 and heaps of frustration.

The first day is the worst.
Not knowing who your friends are,
or what's changed since last year.
Trying to pick it up where you left off.
I'll look real hard for a last-year's friend
to get me from one scrambled class to another,
through halls crawling with people.
I wonder if I'll fit in.

Football practice started last week. It started without me.
I had to make a choice and football lost.
Two years on the team and it struck me--who am I doing this for?
It's just another thing people expect you to do, so you do it.
School is full of these kinds of things---
things that sap your freedom, and keep you from being yourself.

That's what I want most, to be myself. But that's hard.
Here's what I dread most: when summer goes, I go with it.
I go back to school and I change as soon as I walk through those doors.
I have to be someone everyone will like--that's a law of survival.

What would happen if I just stayed the real me?
Would they turn me off? Label me "weird"?
Would I ever get another date?
It seems like so much to risk.
But growing is a risk. Change is a risk.
And who knows, I might discover something of myself
in the coming year.
I might get closer to the person I am---what a discovery that would be!

When the doors open on Monday morning, I’ll have a fresh start,
a fresh opportunity to find myself.
I want to be ready.
________________
 
The first homework assignment of the year is for students to write about lines that resonate with them.  They agree or disagree with the author.  Some students can't wait for school to start.  They get to see their friends and have a social life again.  (That would have been me at their age.)  Others totally understand exactly what the author is saying. 
 
I am never really sure whether what we do in class stays with them or not, but I can't tell you how many students mention this poem in their end of the year writings.  I like that. 
 
No, this poem will never be considered a great poem or even a classic, but it is a great opener for the first day of school.  I'll soon find out what the class of 2015 thinks of the sun going down on their summer and how they really feel about the first days of school.