Exit Slip #1

 Hello twins.

The following response is to a video on the story of Frank McCourt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and beloved high school teacher.

A remark that immediately resonated with me was Frank’s “going with the flow” approach where he didn’t fight his students’ resistance but instead used it to create learning opportunities. He creatively funnelled his students' energy into avenues for learning such as the teacher obituaries and the Shakespearean excuse slips. I found him to be quite clever and funny in this regard, with an incredibly inspiring approach to teaching. Where others might see a challenge he sees an opportunity. The way he transformed his students’ excitabilities to guide his pedagogical approach surely made the content more engaging and encouraged them to be more involved in their learning. I once used a similar approach with a coding class where I knew students were into the Pokemon trading card game. I designed a build-your-own Pokemon game activity using a coding platform called Scratch and it was a huge success. I had never seen the kids so excited to do coding and I remember feeling like I was “tricking” them into learning. I likened it to parents sneaking vegetables into their children’s meals.

Another comment that stood out to me was Frank saying “The main thing about teenagers is, if you can reach them, if they listen to you, the world will listen to you.” This had personal significance for me frequently working with teenagers over the last few years. My ability to connect and develop rapport with them has been valuable to my teaching approach. I’ve often viewed it as a sort of teaching superpower that has been essential to my teaching success so far. At a school where I worked the principal said that my ability to connect with secondary students would be incredibly useful in my future teaching career. However, I often reflect on the question of how to walk the boundary between engaging with their interests as a teacher and not as a friend. Being from a similar generation with several shared interests,  I often have to focus on maintaining the appropriate student-teacher distance at a social level. It is certainly a skill that I will continue to develop and improve on in the future.

Thanks for reading,

Josh