T. Kenneth (English 9)

T. Kenneth informed me before class that the students would be discussing the setting maps they created for Maycomb County in To Kill a Mockingbird. Students were assigned to draw a map of the county in their writing notebooks.

The physical classroom is arranged in a seminar-like format, with tables creating a rectangle around the classroom, open on one side. There are twelve students in the class, too few to fill in the entire rectangle. Still, students are scattered all around the space in clusters of threes and fours, with sometimes as many as five chairs in between groups. Three of the four girls are self-grouped together; the remaining girl is sitting within a group of three male students who appear to be her friends. There is minimal chatter before the class. Students repeatedly glance over at Kenneth, who is casually looking through his notes, seemingly expecting class to begin soon. Kenneth continues to shuffle through his notes and eventually begins class after five minutes of intermingled chatter and silence.

He begins by simply saying, in a fairly projected voice “all right, let’s get our setting maps out and get into groups and share.” There is a brief pause in the smaller student interactions. Kenneth reiterates the command by saying “I mean now,” in a casual, not autocratic, manner. Students are slow to get out their notebooks and T. Kenneth continues to urge them on by saying “let’s go” and reminding students that they “need to take charge of the class…it’s not middle school.” This is a fascinatingly transparent acknowledgment of student agency.

Slowly, students get out their notebooks and begin sharing their maps in self-selected groups. The students seem fairly at ease with their peers, and no one has difficulty finding a group (but there is no movement around the classroom and students assemble themselves based on who is around them). Students share their maps while Kenneth speaks with me about what exactly he hopes to get out of the exercise: he wants students to look at their maps and notice if they created them with a central image in mind—is there a nucleus to the setting.

After about fifteen minutes, Kenneth brings the discussion out to the whole class by asking “Now…does anyone want to share their work with the whole class?” There are a lot of nervous smiles and giggles and looking around among students. One male student, who was the most vocal in the last classroom discussion, raises his hand timidly. He holds up his pencil drawing, which is quite difficult to see for students across the room and he explains which buildings are where. T. Kenneth asks “And what’s at the center there?” The students murmurs an inaudible answer. “What was that?” Kenneth asks? “The tree.” The student replies. “Why did you make the tree the center? Just work with me here…I’m going out on a limb.”

The student seems confused for a second and there is a silence in the class. The student is clearly thinking about his response. Eventually he works his thought out aloud, pausing a lot to amend his statements “I think…I mean, I don’t know…I just drew it like that…I wasn’t sure if I was thinking about it when I was drawing…I mean…I guess, I knew that there were a lot of important events that happened with the tree…it’s where…uh…it’s where they find all that stuff. From Boo Radley.” Kenneth lets the student take his time and work out his logic. Then Kenneth follows up and says “Ok. Very good. Anyone else want to share?” Again, there is a nervous silence. Eventually another boy raises his hand and gives a similar explanation of his map, also adding (without prompting from Kenneth) a reason for making the Finch House the central image on his map.

Kenneth asks if anyone wants to share one more time and looks around the room. No one raises their hand. He lets the silence sit for another moment. A girl (one of the only two who spoke up unprompted in the last class) seems to flex her wrist.* Kenneth then proceeds to shift gears and asks them questions to set them up for future discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird. The questions are numerous and eclectic: “Do we think Harper Lee is making some element of the setting a central image here? If so, what do we think this says about particular characters? The Finch’s? Boo Radley? The Ewells? Now, work with me here…what kinds of relationships is Harper Lee giving us to these characters?” He pauses between each question, but only for thirty seconds or so. Some students nod with recognition, as if they are making connections with the book in their head, others appear visibly confused or sometimes disinterested. The class ends here and Kenneth asks them to prepare to continue this discussion tomorrow.

During our casual talks about his teaching style, T. Kenneth frequently mentioned his one particular goal of giving students agency to learn in his classroom. He even stated that when Spring Term rolls around, he attempts to be as subtle a presence as possible in the class. It is very clear that he is attempting to plant these seeds of agency early in the year, and is making as much effort as possible to demonstrate that to his students. His comment to the students that they “are not in middle school anymore” is a direct relaying of these goals, but it was met with awkward half-smiles and uncomfortable evasion of eye contact. It is admirable that he wants his students to know that he respects them, but this particularly shell shocked section might benefit from a more subtle implementation of these goals—giving students the opportunity to teach other students lessons comes to mind. The lack of structure in these attempts probably seem daunting, and as if T. Kenneth expects a radical change in student behavior overnight. Also, the questions T. Kenneth asked at the end of class made sense to my analysis of To Kill a Mockingbird, but they are definitely fairly complex questions that are asking students to deal with highly theoretical notions.

* Upon further observations in this class and during the lessons I eventually taught in it, I realized that this was the manner in which this particular girl raises her hand to contribute if she’s not entirely sure what she’s saying is correct.