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I Used to be Uncool
I thought my students wrote ‘What does the fox say?’
I started teaching high school students in the fall of 2013 and I was very uncool. My hobbies included long distance running, reading John Steinbeck books and talking too much about them and growing heirloom vegetables. If you think those things are cool, then I have news for you: you are not cool.
When I first started getting to know the meatballs that were my 15 and 16 year old students, I set out to build positive, healthy relationships with them that were based on respect and scholarly curiosity. Youtube? Minecraft? Nay, I would not feign an interest in these plebeian pursuits in an attempt to forge a shallow connection with a pimply faced fourteen year old! Instead, I tried to enlighten them with book talks, stimulating math mind teasers and by sharing my love of the Dixon Ticonderoga pencil with them.
But then the hike happened.
Around October of that year, our school took a field trip to a nearby mountain for a hike. I hiked with a group of a dozen students and another teacher. When we headed down the mountain, some of the aforementioned meatballs were struggling to keep up with the more fleet-footed of our…
