Give 'em a Chance!

Yesterday marked a new adventure for me in the 8th grade classroom. For the past five weeks one of my classes has been reading Fahrenheit 451. For those of you who have not read it...read it. Bradbury wrote it in 1953 but his futuristic novel actually speaks loudly of our culture today. Anyway...as you can imagine, I teach a group of kids who either do not read or who only read one genre. So, when I introduced this unit and explained that they would be reading the book entirely outside of class you can only imagine the grumbling and complaining that I received...even from a parent. This unit touches on so many different topics such as censorship, individuality vs. conformity, knowledge vs. ignorance, change, loneliness, and technology. While they were reading outside of class we were able to talk about what makes good news...how do we know what truth is...and most importantly, how do we know what our responsibility is in society. I know...you are thinking that these are pretty heavy topics for 8th graders. I'll admit that I was skeptical too. I didn't think these kids would sit long enough to read let alone think. But they did. They read the book and they actually thought about it.

Their final assessment for this unit was a Socratic Seminar. This is basically a graded discussion. There were two groups and each had a slightly different question to discuss. They were given the question the day before so they could prepare real life support as well as support from the novel. Their goal was to dialogue about the following two questions: What is the relationship between the individual and society? What is an individual's role in society?

I woke up yesterday dreading this day...truly kicking myself because I knew this was too much for 8th graders. They were going to blow it off and sit and look at each other for the 10 minutes they were on the spot. But, me of little faith...as soon as I proposed the question, they took off. Here are a few comments that they made:

"Didn't JFK say 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country?' Isn't that exactly what we need to discuss here?"

"I'm not sure an individual is as much responsible for society as they are simply a reflection of their society."

"Yeah...they may reflect it, but it's their job to affect it if they see it going bad."

"So how do we decide what's right and wrong?"

"The only way to have a good society is to have people who aren't selfish."

"Sometimes we have to do what's wrong in society's eyes in order to actually do what is right."

"It's our responsibility to know the whole story and not believe just what the news and government tell us."

As I sat there simply listening to these kids I was in awe. As time wore down I stopped them. I looked at each of them and said, "do you really believe what you are saying? In your gut...the innermost part of who you are...do you believe what you are saying? Because if you do...if you truly believe it you can impact your community more than you think. But you have to believe it and do it...not just say it."

Today as I watch the same kids in the hall...it's a miracle that we had class yesterday at all...but for one class period...for one day we had a learning moment...and they weren't necessarily the ones learning.