Contending With Distraction

By Perry Oldham

As I walk away grinning from the best, and the liveliest, junior English class I have had in years, it occurs to me that a good class is a lot like a happy family. There's lots of laughter, and sometimes everyone is talking at once, but behind the eyes you see lots of flashbulbs going off. There's also a clear sense that, even if everyone doesn't actually like everyone else, everyone is accepted and everyone's views are heard. Futhermore, my students are reading difficult material--we just finished As I Lay Dying --with perceptivity and enthusiasm, and their writing continues to soar both in content and form.

Why is it, I ask myself, that such classes are such a rarity? I could flatter myself by concluding that this class's success results from the efforts I have invested in planning lessons that appeal to the students' imaginations and challenge their intellects; in assigning lots of writing and returning it quickly; in letting them know that I take a personal interest in each of them as individuals, not just as students in my English class. But that's what I do with every class I teach. Why is it that classes like my present group of juniors constitute the...