BCTELA

Krista Ediger 

Krista is the English Department Facilitator at McRoberts Secondary School and a member of Richmond's Strengthening Student Literacy Network.

I feel disillusioned, frustrated with the lack of time, with too much bureaucracy, with data, with constraints, and yet I'm still here, teaching. Why? I think I'm here because of the creativity teaching affords me, the relative autonomy I have to shape my course. Amid the criticisms I have of our public education system and the worries I have for its future, there is still room for magic. The classroom, even one with filthy carpet and grey, institutional walls, and five more desks than there's room for, making it difficult to move around with ease, can be a place where students learn and question and struggle and fail and try again and improve and succeed and laugh and play and converse. The classroom can be a place where ideas are shared and created and debated. It can be a place where students find their voices, where they learn to use them with increased confidence and poise and ability. It can be a place where students feel comfortable and safe and able to be themselves, to take risks, to explore aspects of their personalities they wouldn't explore elsewhere. The classroom is a space often filled with 30 minds and bodies that come together two or three times a week. There can be power in this coming together. There is something magnetic about the possibilities in these assemblies. What might be achieved tomorrow? What might happen next Tuesday during H block that will impact the life of the student in the back left-hand corner?

I'm also inspired by the subject area I teach. I believe what I teach to be critical: how to write, to read more strategically, to make meaning. The more I consider how best to deliver lessons on writing, the more I learn about the art and craft of both writing and teaching. I consider myself a student of both, and my students know that they are often in some way part of my experiment for a particular lesson or idea. Writing is a strategy I use to help me to think through ideas or to make sense of something I've read. I want to equip my students with this tool. I don't get tired of looking for better ways of helping students express themselves because after all, "Learning to write is a matter of learning to shatter the silences, of making meaning, of learning to learn" (Greene, Releasing 108).

The importance of teaching students how to write and speak and read and think with more skill and confidence humbles me. I will never know how to do this in the best way possible. I will always have things to learn. This reality also draws me to the teaching of English. There is no end of challenges. And it is at this point that Barrie Barrell's argument that teaching is more art than craft brings a certain level of comfort. He suggests that "teaching conceptualised as an art form is not inherently good or bad. It does recognise, however, that teaching does not necessarily get easier with the passing of time; the work never catches up to the critical sensitivities of the thoughtful teacher" (119).

I still have not had that experience I dream of having, of arriving at the end of a year and looking back on one class, not even all seven, and saying I'm really pleased with how things went. There's not a whole lot I would change. As it is, I have trouble even looking back sometimes. But I do. I'm happiest when I find things there I want to write about, or when I can pinpoint a specific change I want to make. This edition of Update includes two articles on graphic novels, and even as I look back on the first half of this teaching year, I know that I want to try to expand each of my literature circle sets to include at least one graphic novel and more non-fiction titles.

So as some of us begin new semesters and others of us begin new terms, I hope we can all find some inspiration in the ideas printed in Update and other professional publications, as well as in discussions with colleagues, and mine from these a little bit of magic - that lesson that makes the marking and the meetings seem far away. Leyton and I would like to wish you all a happy and healthy 2007. We hope it's a year filled with ideas and debate and learning and play.

Works Cited

Barrell, Barrie R. C. Teaching as a Form of Artistic Expression. Calgary: Detselig, 2003.

Greene, Maxine. Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995.