Then, she wrote so movingly of her experience, using it to write her way out of the trauma, that I have never forgotten it. She was a quiet student who did her work, always on time and competently, until we wrote personal narratives. There was Amy, who had suffered a trauma just before school started when a drug-crazed man held her and her mom hostage in their home for several hours.
He was bright but unengaged, except for once when a writing task took his fancy: we were writing about processes, and he loved the challenge of writing about how to fool your teacher into thinking you were awake in class when you really weren’t. Once, he tried to hit me with his book bag. There was Dan, who never wrote anything and sat slumped in his seat most of the time, no matter how I tried to engage him. But those students? They drew me into the past, to my former students in the junior high classes I taught. The clothing styles have changed some since my time of teaching junior high, and the technology is vastly different. This post was written by NCTE member Deborah Dean.Ī recent visit to some junior high classrooms brought back memories.
