Seniors, Citizens, and Being a Person: Teaching 12th Graders in a Writing Classroom

"It must be nice just teaching the good kids."

"Yes, it is."

And that's the exchange I've had for years. There's not really a response that logically follows after this exchange. It is nice teaching "good kids," however you define that. And I define it as kids who are open to learning, respect each other, and respect me. I've taught this dual credit Rhetoric class for 8 years, and before that I taught AP Literature and Composition for 4 years. So I've had the good kids for a long time. Before AP, I taught the "other" kids--and you know what? Those were good kids, too. Especially the seniors, though. 

Having taught exclusively seniors for 8 years--and seniors overall for 13 of my 15 years in the classroom--I enjoy the benefits of being with these kids. I taught freshmen during my first 3 years, and that is just different: they're still poking each other, often haven't decided on a routine bathing schedule, hold hands 3 across in the hallway, and rarely know how to look adults in the eye when holding a conversation outside of class.

Young Giraffe, wikimedia

Seniors are more like year-old giraffes: they are getting their legs under them, figuring things out, learning how to survive. I've had seniors talk to me about how they're quitting smoking, ask me what to say in a job interview when they're asked about their weaknesses, or want suggestions for a good restaurant to go to in Chicago. They're more like real people. Like Han Solo an hour after emerging from the carbonite, they're starting to see things like the rest of us do; they're appreciative; they're anxious to get involved in the next step; maybe they can understand what a Wookie is saying.

So with my seniors, a modest benefit is also that they get out of school before the rest of the students, and while I do look forward to a little time to myself that last week, I look forward to the last day of class with them as well. Most years, Hackney and I say goodbye to our seniors in ways that define who we are in the classroom--he does it with a David Foster Wallace speech,  

I do it with a song I rewrite every year where I gently poke fun at each student, a song that's rarely amusing to people outside of our class (I make a list of every kid so I don't forget anyone...again).   But the seniors get it. It's a fun way to recap the highs and lows and ridiculousness of the year. Before my song, I have them write a letter to themselves that they address (I have to teach this skill explicitly during the third Friday in May every year), and then I mail them in May of the following year. A former mentor teacher of mine Mrs. Brubaker taught me that, but she held them for 4 years. I don't have that kind of organizational capacity. I have them write my email address in the letter so they can give me updates when the get the letters. It's great to hear what they're up to, putting a face to the name and remembering what they wrote about in their essays, what we talked about in the hallways. The exception is the one year I had them send emails to themselves using Futureme.org. I heard an NPR story about it 

For 9 months of our lives, 5 hours a week, we've seen each other. It's not just that, though; as a writing teacher, we get to read their writing. (*Sidenote: I saw Ryan Adams on Austin City Limits recently, and in an interview he explained how once he was complaining to a friend about his busy schedule, and a friend said, "Don't say I have to do these things. Say I get to do them." That stuck with me.) Essentially we are learning who they are a little more with each essay.The first piece of writing we work on in Rhetoric is a narrative. Nothing prepares me for what I'm in for like a narrative essay every August: Edith had to translate and navigate her parents' home purchase with a banker from English to Spanish at age 10; Mike found out his dad was getting a divorce when he mindlessly opened the glovebox at a stoplight--while driving with his dad--and the papers spilled into his lap; Amber barely spoke in a class for months after a teacher told her an idea she had was dumb; Katie wanted to be an Olympic ice skater.

We learn a lot about these kids, these young adults, who are soon about to be a part of this adulthood experience with us--the other adults--in just a few short months. What do we need to tell them? What do they need to know? I feel a good kind of pressure being with 12th graders. For some seniors, the book they read with us in April is the last piece of classic fiction they'll ever read again, so what must we read? I feel a sense of urgency with their writing, like if I don't get them to understand commas this year, they'll echo Sammy's sentiments at the end of Updike's "A&P": ...my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter. It feels like that when the commas go south. And the pressure isn't just what to read or what to teach them, but just helping them to "be a person," as my library friend has often said to me about what our role really is. Help them be a person.

These 17-18-year-old students are people, and they have stories, stories that don't need to be corrected all the time. Sometimes they just need to be told, and most times they just need to be heard. I enjoy reading them without thinking about making comments. Just reading. Or during some quiet writing time a kid will look up and ask something random, "Newman, did you have a roommate in college?" or "Do you think it's weird if I go alone to prom?" They are thinking of these things. And that's fine. They should be wondering about their college roommate, and they can't help but wonder what others think of them. That's part of being an adult that we never leave behind from our childhoods; or rather, that's part of childhood that we keep with us as adults.

My senior year, four friends and I decided we were going to canoe across the border from northern Minnesota into the Boundary Waters in Canada. We went to the "All-Canada Show" in Rosemont that winter of 1992 and picked an outfitter and the whole thing. I can't tell you how many Candian flags I drew in my notebook during the last 3 months of my senior year. That was on my mind. Whether or not I'd break up with my girlfriend before graduation was on my mind. Singing in my rock band Kindread (the spelling implied darkness and gloom) was on my mind. It's not always a senioritis thing. It's a "this is my life" thing. So I respect that about them when the get a little off track. We just have to help them figure out why getting back on track is important, too.

hairy-nose wombat

The two groups I have this year, 28 in one class and 34 in the other, are classes that I really enjoy. Their research paper topics never cease to amaze me. Hackney and I give them a pretty wide berth when it comes to topics, and what they come back with sometimes are ideas that I could never have imagined. The one requirement is a survey (thanks, Google Forms) or interview (phone/email/personal). This year, I'm learning about algorithms on dating sites; the relevance of music in the deaf community; why entry-level fast-food jobs should be seen as leadership opportunities; why the collaborative efforts of Australia and the US to save the koala, the platypus, and the hairy-nosed wombat are working and what implications that can have for other endangered species. Zack emailed some conservationists in Australia and they got back to him; it's the career he wants to pursue in college.  Each year, these seniors explore topics that I become a 10-minute expert in if I'm making small talk at a party or something* (exception: 10 years ago my student, Manveer, wrote about String Theory. I'm afraid that if someone's making small talk about that, I'll need to find someone who wants to talk about wombats, or hell, I probably shouldn't be at that party; however, to learn more about String Theory, watch this TED Talk).



So all that said, I guess this is where I'm at: there are "good kids" everywhere. Our job as teachers is to get them to learn something about being a person, about being a citizen, and listening to them and reading what they have to say and not giving soul-crushing feedback after they say it, or write it. We're all trying to figure this thing out. But seniors often have a little bit of the humility, if we look hard enough, that's needed to start to figure it out, and when they're asking us how to do it, we at least owe them that much: to just listen and appreciate what we get to do.