Light Refreshments Served

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m pleased to introduce you to my little sister, Kjerstin, our guest blogger today. She’s a recent BYU grad (another English major) and she always has interesting things to say, with carefully thought out reasoning to back up her opinions and a vocabulary that would make a librarian blush (it’s been known to happen). She has travelled around Europe (solo!), served a mission in Armenia, and survived a childhood with a weirdly spelled name (it’s pronounced Cher-stin). I love her fresh, thoughtful perspective on just about everything. Click over to her blog for more. And I think you’ll like what she has to say about teaching at a charter high school. Thanks for sharing, Kjersti.

---

I went into high school teaching kicking and screaming. All through college I scoffed at the secondary ed students, scoffed when  people asked me if I would teach, scoffed until a professor talked to us about his work with high school superintendents and a rhetorician’s belief that proper argumentation was the revolution education was looking for. Argumentation? Changing kids’ lives? Hilarious high school students? Scoffed all the way to the bank.

So here I am, in Lindon Utah, wearing Banana Republic (when you’ve just graduated, any money is a lot of money) and teaching Gilgamesh to charter school kids. I have a top drawer full of play-dough and have taken a liking to the Gilmore Girls. I’ve been working on being present and a part of that is finding joy in all of this. This is what I’ve found so far:

I love detention. I make my kids come in if they’re tardy, unprepared, or mouthy and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.

I know, you thought you’d grown out of the stereotype of the sadistic teacher. It’s such a good time, though, to connect with kids that need connection. To pick their brains and let them know they’re listened to. Plus they clean up my room and are hilarious.

I love the classroom. My favorite: dropping a big, implication-riddled question on a classroom full of bright-eyed 14-year olds. We talk about existentialism (“how would your life be different if there was nothing after this life?” ), we talk about anthropology (“why is civilization essential to religion?”), we talk about Marxism (“how did the division of labor influence gender roles?”). I wonder if they’ll get it, if in college in 5 years they’ll think back: Miss Evans was teaching us what?! I hope so. It feels real devious.

I love when they pull out something completely unexpected and brilliant. We were talking about political rhetoric today (I showed Kennedy campaign spots and “Yes We Can”) and talked about how just because Nixon is less appealing it doesn’t mean he was less carefully posed. They got it. Something most adults are still working through I think.

Anyway. Thanks for raising good kids, you guys. They’re adorable.