T. Lucy (English 11)

T. Lucy’s classroom is arranged in a seminar-like format, with tables creating a rectangle around the classroom, open on one side. She sits at a table which could be construed as the “head” of the class, and asks me to sit next to her (despite the fact that I defined my role to her as “observer”). There are 16 students in the class—11 girls and 5 boys. There seem to be about 4 people of color. It is still the first full week of classes and all students are required to wear their nametags. Before class begins, there is much chatter among the students about non-academic matters. T. Lucy focuses the class with a moment of silent worship.

She starts by having students take out the short story “Roselily” by Alice Walker and by explaining that we will read the story aloud together in class. She briefly invokes her personal connection to the theme of marital anxiety in the story. T. Lucy also explains that students will respond to the story as a homework assignment at this moment. We go around the room, each person in the room (including me) reading a paragraph aloud. During this exercise, the majority of the students appear engaged and interested, though a few students (2 males and 1 female) alternatingly look around the room, at their watches, at the ground, etc. One male student reads with a particularly emotive and forceful voice (a student I recognize from a theater class I’ve observed) and some students crack smiles and giggle slightly. There is no other response or reaction from the other students or T. Lucy.

After we’ve finished reading the story, T. Lucy begins to ask simple factual questions about it: “Who is narrator? Who is she marrying?” A couple of female students are the only ones responding at this point, and T. Lucy doesn’t do much to draw out students who aren’t talking. She does allow for periods of silence to let each question resonate. Slowly, more students begin speaking organically. There is one quiet girl who is directly to T. Lucy’s right who appears out of her field of vision. None of the students of color have spoken up yet about this story.

At this point in the class, only 2 boys have spoken, and they each gave one-sentence responses to the kind of factual questions previously mentioned. Towards the end of the class, T. Lucy asks a question to the whole class about constraints women feel in wedlock. She asks students “how might you, as women, perceive these constraints to affect your decision to marry?” By the end of the class, one boy eventually speaks up about traditions in Muslim wedding ceremonies (it appears to be from personal experience). The period is over and students leave.

By using a moment of silent worship to center the class, T. Lucy really effectively gained students’ attention right away. The read aloud-along method of going over the story also definitely appeared to have its merits for some student focus though, as these exercises tend to go, during the reading some students appeared unengaged, and after the reading some appeared to have difficulty recalling information that wasn’t in the portion of text that they read. In this particular class, T. Lucy appeared eager for all students to participate, with her warm and open body language and facial expressions, but it appeared difficult, nonetheless, to get more than 5 students to verbally contribute to discussion. It is also worth noting that she tended to ask follow up questions/build upon what female students said more than male students (she asked repeated follow up questions to help 5 female students and only 1 male student to further clarify their statements), even when both presented points worth exploring further. One last interesting note is the question she asked the class about constraints in marriage, referring to all students as the collective you (as women). It is of course a wonderful exercise to try and get students of all genders to try and understand the experiences of other genders, but the way she worded this question seemed to open it up to the female population of the class.