Skip to main content

Bus Rides

Today I spent about seven hours on buses with students. The first trip involved 49 students on a trip to Central Michigan University, and the second was to chaperone a spirit bus for a basketball game.

The ride to CMU was lively. Students were awake, engaged in conversation up and down the aisles. For some students, like the one I sat next to on the bus, this was his very first college visit--ever. For others, this was a return trip. They were hoping to finalize a decision about their next few years.

After a tour around campus and lunch in a dining hall, we piled back on the bus. And before long, a tranquil silence took over. Students drifted off to sleep or just experienced a calm contentment with the day. Some questions were answered, and some new ones were developed. A powerful trip ended in quiet reflection.

I write this surrounded by students on the return trip from a basketball game where our team just won.

It's been a long time since our team has made it this far. It's 9:00 PM. I expected a similar bus ride, but students are alive with energy. They're singing. They're chanting. They have so much pride.

As a teacher, it's so motivating to see students so proud of their school and their peers. I’m looking forward to this energy, this enthusiasm, reverberating down the halls tomorrow.

Go, Zebras!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Changing My Car’s Battery Made Me Think About Education

A lot of people write about how educators use the summer to “recharge their batteries,” which is true. It’s nice to have some down time to reflect and plan for the next year. It’s the one time of year when there aren’t constant demands for teachers’ and administrators’ time. No concerts, no after school events, no evaluations to prepare for.
Part of this time allows me to catch up on things that I didn’t have time for during the school year, like changing the battery in our Jeep, which is our only vehicle that has roof racks for us to transport our kayaks. We were able to get by this winter by jumping it a few times when it was really cold out, but my wife and I both knew it would eventually need to be replaced. My wife and I also knew nothing about replacing a battery.
So I turned to YouTube. And I watched video after video of someone changing car batteries in order to figure out what to do. I learned about “core charges” that auto part supply stores charge. I learned that batterie…
Post a Comment
Read more

'Embarrassment' Review

I just finished Thomas Newkirk's Embarrassment: And the Emotional Underlife of Learning. Like anything by Newkirk, I devoured it and found that so much of it rang true with my philosophy and feelings when it comes to teaching.

Here are ten lines that stood out to me in the book (in no particular order):


"Unless we can get beyond this reluctance, we never put ourselves out there to learn--we never become the novice we need to be to learn." (15)"Schools face what might be called the paradox of offering help... you need a designation for that group, and that very designation may be so stigmatizing that students would rather forgo the help than to accept the label." (33)"We need to look beyond the posture of indifference, or just see it as a posture." (61)"We are happy, gratified to offer help--that is a big part of our professional identity. But we (or at least I) are far more reluctant to receive help." (63)"Failure or disappointment is le…
Post a Comment
Read more

Making Time to Struggle

I recently traveled to Northern Ontario with family to fish for four days on Lake Wabatongushi. Aside from “unplugging” for several days, fishing with my wife and our family reminded me of how important it is for educators to put themselves in situations in which they are not the experts in the room and where they must engage in productive struggle in order to figure things out.

So let me start by saying that I am not a fisherman. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy fishing. I used to go fishing with my grandfather when I was really young. Heck, there was even a time when I remember exuberently telling my grandmother how we “went fishing with no poles” when I was six or seven. But despite that, I hadn’t really gone fishing since I was a teenager and would occasionally fish from the riverbank at my grandparents’ house.

So I knew that even agreeing to go on a fishing trip would put me in a situation where I would have to be vulnerable, ask questions, and try many times in order to figure things…
Post a Comment
Read more