Cultivating Questioners

This morning I finished teaching my classes here at Upward Bound. It was bittersweet. As a last activity, I had my students reflect and write one thing that they learned in class that they would carry forward with them into their lives in the “real world.” Hearing their responses — which ranged from bringing a more critical view to their encounters with the media, to thinking about whether they are making the most productive use of their time, to spending time looking for the “hidden” messages that are conveyed in the world around them — was tremendously gratifying. Their final writing assignment was to think about how their attitudes toward the media/technology have evolved over the course of the summer, and I am really looking forward to reading them while I work on their evaluations next week.

I always have a difficult time when classes come to an end, especially those that I am facilitating. Inevitably, I always feel like I have so much more that I want to say and that there is so much more that we could have done. But, I am really happy with how our work together went this summer — I think everyone involved got something valuable out of our discussions and time together. I am feeling sad to see my time with these wonderful students come to an end, but I am tremendously invigorated about returning to teach second grade in the fall!