Teaching Journal 9/17-9/21

            I had an interesting week with my class, to say the least. I'm going to back track in the week for organizational purposes. On Friday, my class turned in their Intro and Synthesis. I have spent ALL weekend commenting on them and helping them formulate more fluid thoughts. For the most part, they are well informed and are understanding well. I do have several students that continue to only strive to kiss mediocrity on the cheek, but I have two that barely meet the requirements and relish n the idea of being a tad under what I expected for first drafts of thoughts. I'm getting random quotes pulled from articles with no context or summary. It's just being used as a space filler and a citation to cross off the list of barely acceptable. I will be explaining more to them on Monday.
           Backtracking in sequence, Wednesday my class met Porter and Bernhardt. They liked their ideas and  merged the two together with a PowerPoint demonstrating Porter's intertextuality as well as providing visual aids to flow into Bernhardt. The reason I had to merge the two readings though are because of the unique and hopefully isolated event of Monday. Monday is the day I wish to focus on.
          I met Monday with excitement, not knowing that my students were already broken-hearted due to other events. Because a student at the university had died and I had no idea, the student's room mate informed me at the beginning of class. He explained that he didn't do his homework because he couldn't and apologized.  I was taken back by the fact that he felt the need to apologize for something that was obviously out of his control, but that he also said it with tear-filled words and felt that he couldn't stop for a moment to understand it was okay. I had to take a moment to collect myself. I was stunned. My student, this sturdy young man was on the edge of tears and I was trying to decide whether to continue with Porter. As he tried to not cry, friends of the deceased student began talking and then several were crying. It was a chain reaction that I could not stop, nor did I think I should. It was important to them, this breaking point, that one student described as "The world keeps moving and no one is stopping to say someone is dead. I don't understand."
For a moment I feared that I would be Murray and describe death to young people having the most innapropriate or awkward things to say. Thankfully, I did not. Instead, I let them cry. I told them that I hoped  that if any of them ever needed someone to talk to that they could talk to me and that Psychological Services was actually an excellent place to talk as well. I told them that I was thankful it wasn't any of them and sad that it was anyone at all. And then we journaled. We journaled for twenty minutes about things we could and could not change. We shared and then I dismissed. And now I'm thankful that even though my class was a little behind, I don't have to think about what I could have changed about that moment in which, they were  homesick and weary about the real world that had just slapped them in the face and just needed someone to say "It's okay to cry."