Imagine a Tone of Surprise and Stunned Reverence

If I didn't know any better, I'd say I'd inherited someone else's life in the past week.

My student teaching placement is in tenth grade in a large suburban high school. The students enter the room. They do not sit on the desks, or wander in circles in the room, or commence shouting, or toss things about, or begin altercations, nor do they stampede the teacher's desk and remove items (the intention of giving said items back being an absolutely separate matter). Some of them appear to be cheerful, others merely going through the motions of school--and they know the motions very well. They take their seats--seats they have been assigned. And they may chat with their classmates nearby, or finish their homework in the brief interlude before class starts.

My cooperating teacher was saddened to find that three students total out of the first two classes had failed to complete their homework. I was awed. Only three? At my last placement, homework was not assigned, because the students refused to do it. They were beyond refusing. There was simply no hope that they would ever do it. And a seating chart. Pahahalease. No, you poor, sad baby. We'll sit down where we like when we take the notion to sit down.

There is carpet on the classroom floors.

She puts the period's agenda on the smart board, and follows it. The students bring their books and their own pencils, with a few exceptions, and they work together in pairs or groups to complete the assigned work. I know! Maybe this doesn't sound radical to you.

But last November allowed me to step back from my expectations for classrooms. Apparently, I stepped pretty far back. Because this all seems foreign to me. Everything from the organization of the bell schedules to the presence of technology. The only thing to remain is that teachers care here, too.