Interesting Story

As I was driving to work yesterday morning, I heard a story from NPR that made me think about the politics of students' behavior. I've been thinking about this story ever since, and it's making tons on sense. I've been thinking a lot lately about transforming the culture of my classroom. I feel like I have always tried to maintain a classroom climate that is positive and respectful, but I'm hoping for more this year.

Here's what I want:

-I want a classroom full of students who read ALL the time. I want my classroom to be a place where students are talking about books, poetry, magazine articles, comics, etc. ALL of the time.

-I want my classroom to be a place where students can talk about their perceptions and feelings about their world. I want to talk about reality.

-I want to make poetry a focal point of my lesson planning and teaching.

-I want us to be surrounded by words and to never take lightly the power that a single word can carry.

-I want us to write, write, write until our fingers are inflamed!

Maybe some of this won't happen. Maybe some students won't want to write, write, write and will still talk about their weekend plans when I trying to bring the class to order. Maybe some students will groan when I announce that it's Poetry Friday. At the very least, I'm going to keep these "wants" of mine upfront and center when I'm thinking about my students and my teaching. I'll let you know how this all shakes out!