The "productive struggle" and a week of hard teaching...April is the cruellest month...

UP, and enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee. It's Saturday. 

Yes, I'm sort of lazy this morning. It was a helluva busy and exhausting week. But in a few minutes, I'll get myself motivated-- there are things on my agenda that I want to get done. But I'm also going to make sure to put a little "me time" in there. It's all about balance. 

My AP Lit kids managed to engage in what is known as "productive struggle" this week-- and it worked. I wanted them to have to fight their way through an assignment (low stakes, but still a grade) and come out the other side being more competent. They were tasked with annotating T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." Yeah, I'm that miserable *itch of a teacher. LOL It's rough going, to be sure. Then yesterday, I put them in pairs (no student input--work with whom you get) and assigned each pair a section of the poem to present an explication for, and they also had to answer four questions: what is the function of the allusions in the entire piece, how does the poet establish tone and mood? What is the function of the title to the whole? How does the poet create characters and the speaker(s)? And then (the icing on the cake), they had to develop a defensible thesis for the entire piece, as if they were going to write a critical analysis. 

OOOOF. Big oof. 

Most did a pretty good job, and the theses were really good. In all fairness, literature scholars have difficulty working their way through this poem. It's an uphill haul, to be sure. But they engaged with it. So maybe the next assignment will come out a whole lot better. I sure hope so. And they are all facing the AP Lit exam the Wednesday after break, so we realistically only have about a week, then a week off, then two days left before it's "go time." 

Now, I don't know if they will ever appreciate the task I gave them (well, I know one student does, but he's a different kind of kid-- loves the hard poetry, loves Keats and Shelley and Rilke, and is now intrigued by Eliot, is reading Dante on his own, wants to tackle Milton). I don't know if they'll pass the damned exam. But I know that they had to work at something individually, and they couldn't use AI for it, and they had to read hard stuff and think about it, use resources for real investigation, and they had to be patient. And they had to collaborate with someone they don't usually work with in order to present ideas. 

Hard work. Hard teaching. Hard teacher. 

No wonder I'm tired. 

And did I mention that the creative writing class is fully immersed in The Odyssey? And I am reading it aloud every day in class? And that three of the five students in the class are also in the AP Lit class? 

We all got a mental workout this week.

Enjoy your Saturday, friends. Share the love.

C

PS: I did give them this audio to follow along with, if they chose to. It's Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins performing the poem. =)  It's gorgeous.