There are many reasons we teach, and one of them is magic.
I’d argue that if a teacher spends a lot of time thinking, “Wow, there’s real magic in my classroom,” that it’s time for the teacher to stop the navel-gazing. Perhaps, however, that teacher has reached some level of self-actualization which I’ll never attain. Either way, I’m indulging myself by describing the magic I had in a recent class.
I used a friend’s lesson idea about using six senses to describe an early memory. My students had completed a graphic organizer, and then we read a short chapter from Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street called “Hair.” We examined how she had used her senses in writing and then got busy.
My pen flew, and from time to time I looked up to watch my students. They had about ten minutes to do a freewrite… Write like hell and turn the censor off. Just get the words out, based on what they had already written in their five senses graphic organizer. They wrote, and wrote, and wrote, past the ten minutes I had given them. Finally, a few students seemed to have exhausted their ideas. They sat. In silence. No one else got distracted. Finally, most of the group was nearly finished, and their silence seemed sacred.
We shared. One girl told us about how she was sure a girlfriend of hers had stolen her baby doll. You could feel the other girl’s thick black hair as she yanked it in anger. Other students shared telling details as well, and our senses tingled with their descriptions. The students encouraged each other, telling them the unique strengths they found in the writing. I thanked them for their seriousness and maturity in the exercise, and I so badly wanted to cry. It was magic, after all.
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