My "Mt. Rushmore" Lessons (Pt. 2)
my other two favorite lessons to teach—once again with resources included!
A couple weeks ago I began this multi-part series with a story of how students discovered that I did indeed have a list of favorite lessons to teach—and how it has since become a recurring bit in our classroom for students to grill me about where the current lesson ranks.
”When is the next Rushmore lesson, Mr. Luther?”
In that initial post, I shared out two of my current favorites—our first peer workshop lesson as well as our opening lesson for graphic novel analysis—and this time I’m following up with two others: a lesson on how we introduce poetry in our classroom and a lesson I use to close the school year out.
(Note: since I’ve written/shared already multiple times about what is perhaps my all-time favorite in twelve years of teaching, the peer affirmation gallery walk with narrative poetry, I figured I would leave that out of these posts.)
Once again, I’ve shared some resources to go with my reflections on these two lessons—and once again, you’re encouraged to talk about your own favorite lessons in the comments below! Quite selfishly, reflecting back on all these lessons over the past few weeks has been a genuinely enjoyable experience, so I also want to thank you for indulging me with this two-part series.
Time spent thinking about lessons you love as a teacher is time well spent, after all.
Without further ado, then, here is the second half of my Mt. Rushmore lessons as a teacher:
#3: Introducing Poetry with Louise Glück’s “The School Children”
Context: any time in my career when I’ve wanted to step into poetry, I turned to this mesmerizing, perhaps perfect poem by the late Louise Glück (linked below). I also have used this poem in the past as a conversation-starter around how students experience school overall, as it offers a great reflection lens for students to consider their own relationship over the years with the education system.
What Takes Place: in recent years, we have begun with two different prep activities: [1] an essential question reflection around how students feel about their relationship with the education system and [2] a brief run-through of how to approach reading and analyzing a poem. Then we dive into this poem with the following approach for each stanza:
I read the stanza aloud twice and then give them time to underline/highlight something they have a reaction to (thought, question, etc.)
In partners or small groups, they share those reactions—and then we debrief them aloud whole-class
Then I make sure to cover anything that wasn’t mentioned, particularly available figurative readings (see image above)
The best thing about this poem, though? How it builds on itself. You can feel the energy in the room shift with each progressive stanza, and stanza three—oh my. Many students at the end of the school year months later name that moment as the most memorable one of the entire class.
(There are lots of ways you can end the lesson—exit ticket on how choices in the poem create meaning, reflection on how the poem’s message aligns with your perspective, etc.—but this is definitely a lesson in which the experience of the poem is the peak aspect of the lesson.)
Why I Love It So Much: there are several memorable single-lesson texts that have the power to transform the energy in the classroom—”Sticks” (Saunders), “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” (Le Guin), any poem by Ada Limón or Elizabeth Acevedo, etc.—but the power in this one is that in my experience it can transform any classroom.
I’ve used it at all grade levels, in AP classes, small-group credit recovery, over the past decade. In every single one, you watch students literally change the way they look at a poem and consider what it is capable of.
What a gift this text is and continues to be, an unparalleled “teaching text” that Glück left us to inspire our classrooms with while also simultaneously offering a lens of accountability for us working in education.
Despite the title, the poem deliberately leaves out any direct mention of the “children” in the final stanza, an absence that represents the way so often our choices and conversations in education sideline the perspective and voice of the true stakeholders: our students.
“The School Children” leaps off the page, therefore, to demand that we as teachers consider that disconnect and so much else in education, and that is why it is an undeniable Mt. Rushmore lesson any time it enters the classroom.
Resources:
#4: End-of-Year Project Shares and Affirmations
Context: this is far and away the most particular of these lessons to my own classroom—and is a culmination, more than anything, of both our final project (see resource below) and the classroom community we have built leading up to that final day of class. Quite literally, this is the last time I see many of these students before summer officially arrives.
Going into this lesson, each student has already created and submitted their own “Write Something Meaningful” multimodal project that brings together five separate elements:
While students each chart their own path through this project (and I will admit, after several years of doing this, I’ve seen a lot of different paths!) they all have three essential ingredients in common:
a title in the form a haiku
some aspect of narrative/reflective writing
a visual element related to their “meaning”
So on the day of this lesson—which also happens to be our final day of the second semester—students walk into the classroom to find the desks in a circle and a slide deck projected with the poem “In Lak’ech” by Luis Valdez.
And then we begin.
What Takes Place: we set our expectations and norms after reciting Valdez’s “In Lak’ech” as a class: a] everyone will have an individual slide with their title, visual element, and a quote of their choosing from their project (see sample slide above); b] they will take turns reading out from their slide and then sharing with the class what they did for their project—and why they found it meaningful; and c] those listening will write down and then share out individual affirmations at the end of each sharing round.
We typically share out 6-7 slides and then do a round of affirmation-driven feedback, and then repeat the process until every slide has been shared and all peer affirmation has been shared out.
Almost always, this takes the entire final period—sometimes to the point that the last affirmation is shared right when the bell rings.
Then the students exit out into summer and I am left in the classroom, awestruck and overwhelmed with gratitude.
Why I Love It So Much: I mean, if you know, you know, right? This lesson, after all, is a culmination of everything we’ve done up to this point, so unlike the other three I’ve shared here it is much more of a mirror into what already exists in the classroom than a window to something new.
That said, I think it is important to name my conviction that this is how I believe a classroom community should come to an end, if you can make it happen:
An entirely student-centered lesson, with me literally sidelined as the teacher beyond the circle as students share what they find meaningful with each other and then share back with affirmations to each other.
It centers student agency, too, in what they share, as there is no “right answer”—students share all sorts of things and, without fail, are affirmed by their classmates, no matter their share.
It honors the classroom community that exists. A lot of generosity and resilience goes into building any community, perhaps none more so than that within a classroom—so an end-of-year lesson that leans into this feels right.
This isn’t a lesson that just “happens” out of nowhere, of course.
It takes planning and relationship-building—and more than a little prep work in getting the slide deck ready! It looks different time, too, because every classroom community has had a different path to this culminating lesson.
But in my previous eleven years of teaching, there are few better feelings I’ve had than in sitting alone after the students have all left following this lesson, pouring into the hallways and their awaiting summers, while I silently consider all that just took place in this lesson along with every lesson that led up to it.
Mt. Rushmore is an understatement, I think.
Resources:
Honorable Mention: Introducing Rhetorical Appeals via Break-Up Text Messages
While this one didn’t make the top four, it definitely is one that I’ve turned to for almost a decade now as a way to mix things up while also building engagement and investment for our rhetorical analysis unit.
To keep it simple: we briefly introduce the rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos, pathos) and then students are given a chance to explore a gallery walk of hypothetical “break-up text messages” to analyze which appeals are used in each.
Do I play sad instrumental music during and remind them that tissues are strategically stationed around the room? Yes I do.
(Do students ask me if these were all break-ups I experienced myself? No, I tell them, without going into detail about sob stories via MSN Messenger.)
Sometimes it matters for a lesson to be memorable. And this one very much is!
Resources:
A Final Note of Reflection
As I noted in the opening, this exercise of thinking back on my favorite lessons of recent years and re-living them via reflection for this two-post series?
It was an absolute blast.
Lots of lessons didn’t make the cut, too, and perhaps at some point I’ll do a runners-up series with some other favorite lessons centered around metaphysical conceits, rhetorical appeals via break-up texts, and pretty much any chapter from Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime.
The bigger thing this made me realize, though: reflecting on our “wins” as a teacher is a really important thing to do that, at least for me, doesn’t always happen enough—especially as the year comes to a close and I prepare to collapse into summer.
As teachers, I think, we deserve to sit with our wins far more than we often allow ourselves to do.
So thank you for giving me some space to sit with mine—and hopefully there’s a chance that at least one of these lessons resonated with you!
(And if it did, seriously let me know if you want to bounce emails or messages for more resources/clarification in case you’re interested in trying it out in your own classroom! That’s the whole point of this Broken Copier project, really.)
Beyond that, have a great Memorial Day weekend, keep letting Jim and I know via comments and emails what you’d like to see from The Broken Copier going forward, and take care of yourself!
—Marcus