Three months into teaching

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

(12/2024) Three months into teaching, and daylight savings has made every day feel warped, like a constant night with bits of day in between. I drive to school with the sunrise in my rearview, and I drive into the sunset on my way home. It is beautiful, I will admit, to watch the sky change from my dashboard, to watch the colors swim into one another while the world darkens. Other times, I find it quite depressing. I don’t have the shortest commute, and the occasional school bus or tractor trailer can make my mornings ever so slow. Sometimes, I feel like the days are piling up behind me and in front of me, and I am in the middle, turning the page each time I go to sleep. I feel like each day is a ritual, a pattern that must be followed.

It’s like a tradition, almost.

And in honor of December, the month of Christmas and coming home and being with family, I thought I would write about the little traditions I have started in my classroom, and the little traditions I have picked up from student teaching or from being in school myself. Although regularly defined as "the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation," I like to think of traditions as special pieces of ordinary that we repeat. We repeat these even in the ordinary, or in the extraordinary. We grow accustomed to traditions, reliable on them.

So what does tradition look like in the classroom?

It begins with grammar. Every day, my students walk into my classroom, amongst the dimmed fluorescent lights and twinkling LEDs from my dorm room, and they settle into their seats, pull out their warmup sheets. Today, my students reviewed apostrophes. Last week, they learned all about capitalization. Since the first week of school, I have committed myself to teaching my students all about grammar. For ten minutes a day, we learn new concepts, practice, and participate in drills that truly nail down comprehension. Today, as we reviewed the plural possessive forms of words, my students mumbled and groaned at how complicated the English language was. I wanted to laugh—they had no idea what the Emmitsburg News-Journal staff went through every month!

I have also made my students accustomed to incorporating these grammar concepts into their writing. While I strongly believe in the teaching and reviewing of grammar topics, I also ensure that my students apply their knowledge to their writing. Otherwise, what good is ten minutes a day of grammar? Because of this, I make my students write every day. We journal about how the quarter is going, or we reflect on how we feel about classes. We might write creatively, or we might analyze a text. Routine exposure to writing is crucial, and ELA would not exist without it.

What I believe is more important, however, is reading. I recently asked my students, "When was the last time you read a book for fun?" My seventh-grade students answered back: "First grade. Third grade. Fourth grade." For some, they had never.

I wanted to cry for my students. How could they not have read for fun? When I revealed that I had read a whopping 38 books just this year, their jaws dropped, as if such an act could never be possible. It was in this moment I realized that reading—true, independent, self-selected reading—is so important. I can assign all the text passages I’d like, but if students don’t have a natural love and desire to read, then getting them to succeed in ELA is impossible.

To tackle this, I have established the "tradition" of going to the media center every two weeks. Students have the ability to browse the school library and select up to three books to take home or keep in my classroom. Students can then read their books when they have nothing else to do. This has worked beautifully in my classroom so far, as students have grown accustomed to grabbing their book as soon as they finish work. Later in the year, my students will have book reports where they will choose a format of presenting their book. My hope is that this tradition evolves into a routine, and that my students will eventually grow to love reading.

There are smaller traditions within these. Traditions of finding important vocabulary in a text prior to reading. Traditions of being quiet and staying quiet as soon as I begin talking. Traditions born out of mutual respect, of a classroom community. I am proud of students, and they have already settled into the daily traditions of ELA class.

In December, my students will begin reading "A Christmas Carol: The Play." We will begin by learning about historical context of the novel, as well as a breakout room to "chase Dickens around Victorian England" (if there is any way to make ELA fun, I try!). After reading the play, students will attend a dramatic production of "A Christmas Carol" and will have the opportunity to express their own thoughts and depictions of the story through writing. My students have only had one essay for me so far, and I made sure to keep it very structured and precise. This time around, I will challenge my students to explore their own thoughts and not rely so much on sentence starters. Students will have to summarize the play themselves and compose a completely original essay. Some traditions simply don’t stick around!

Despite the darkening days and the colder weather, every day feels exciting. Every day feels new. One of my college friends asked me, "Are you happy?" And the truth is, I am. While I am exhausted every day—an exhaustion I have never, ever experienced, not even in college—I am also so excited to teach. I actually like coming to work! It doesn’t feel like a job, and it doesn’t feel like I’m under too much pressure. After all, nearly three months of building tradition in my classroom has paid off. Let’s see if it can last the rest of the year!

And lastly, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I am still so thankful for the Emmitsburg community and hopeful that I can visit soon.

Read other articles by Claire Doll