Inquisitive

A student approached me tepidly the other day with a question that I found quite ironic: "What is this word?" he inquired.

The word was inquisitive.

While I reflected that I may need to edit my disclosure document to reflect more fitting middle school vocabulary, I had to keep myself from laughing at his question. Why? Because these students are some of the most inquisitive people I have ever met in my life. They have questions (and stories) to go along with everything I say.

It makes getting through an entire lesson quite challenging, but always entertaining.

And I'm getting better at deflecting the questions that have no place in the classroom - sometimes you just have to say to all the hands raised in the air, "How about you wait for me to explain the rest of the directions and then you can let me know if you still have questions? Mkay."

And I'm starting to learn who those students are who ask questions like, "When are we going to dissect a frog?" when you use the word dissect to expound the term analysis. The connections these kids make are absolutely incredible.

I couldn't believe how insightful our discussion of analysis was today. I showed this picture in class and challenged the students to "analyze" or break down the photo into small pieces and put the pieces back together in a meaningful way to create a new idea (synthesis).

Two of my seventh grade periods both came to the conclusion or synthesized that this girl was from a foreign land and had endured a lot of suffering. 7th graders. Came up with that.

My eighth graders - heaven, bless them - decided that this girl was a depiction of Little Red Riding Hood. Which isn't wrong at all, but it made me even more aware of the differences between 7th and 8th grade. 

I was just floored. 

Teaching these students invigorates me. I walked away from each class exhausted but elated today - even with my eighth graders.

Tomorrow we get to continue our lessons on analysis and synthesis - I can't begin to express how excited I am. Granted it's Friday, and that will be an adventure, but my management procedures (so far) have been pretty powerful. It is really great to see the positive peer pressure that erupts when I start to keep track of the seconds they'll have to stay after class for "stealing" my time. 

I wouldn't be happy doing anything but teaching.