A Day of High Hopes

One of the most meaningful experiences of my education was the day that my AP Composition teacher asked us to help her revise her application essay for an award she'd been nominated for. Being a part of her writing process was empowering. I had never experienced such a level footing with an educator, and the feeling stuck with me for a long time.

After yesterday's post, it occurred to me that a similar opportunity was presenting itself. On other occasions, my students have really enjoyed when I've shared my writing. We just started a figurative language unit, and my poem used many of the terms we were practicing. So, I copied and pasted that bad boy into a Google Doc, slapped on a space for instructions and student comments and passed it out.

This is the part where I wish I could tell you that it was an incredible life-changing, relationship-building experience that highlighted the importance of being a good writing role model. If you like being inspired, you can stop here and pretend that's what happened.

It's not like it was a catastrophe. My students did a good job of ferreting out the figurative language, and some of their comments were pretty funny. Many of them had a problem with it not rhyming, which I thought was an archetype we had outgrown as a culture. (Past years have not taken issue with free verse poetry in the same way.) But was it the spectacular lesson I imagined? Not really. It was just okay.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day!