Go Away, Sweeties...No, Wait, Stay!

I remember--however hazily--when I was a senior in high school. We attended classes till the sour, bitter end of classes. We were still students, after all. It was ostesibly our job, right? My friends and I worked hard for our final grades, laboring under the pretty frail threat of the revoking of college admission "if our grades fell." The catch was that we seniors didn't actually know way back then just how very frail this threat was, so we made sure to finish strong on our last round of finals--yes, finals, just like everyone else. In fact, we were somehow proud to be able to show our stuff, go out with the proverbial bang, and allow our parents to be proud of a report card and teacher remarks yet one last time before moving to the dorm and out of our homes forever.

The monumental, "finale" conception of senior year has lost its luster. At the school where I teach, everything which happens starting on April 1st becomes a prolonged anti-climax worthy of the most angst-fraught drivel written by early-thirties American writers who descend through the quotidienne and serve to stultify and nullify efforts to even just awake every morning--yes, Dave Eggers, I mean you. Please understand that we have some real A-plus personality types who are as eager as those "A" (and even just "A-minus") personality types of my high school days. There are eighteen-year-olds in my literature class who still read with aplomb, attention to detail and (now, muted) zeal. These are the grandest exception of recent senior classes, however. What is it about a college acceptance letter that sends them into a spiral of cynicism and banal dismissal of all intellectual pursuit? They are better than this: more capable thinkers than most who suddenly fall off a cliff and into paroxysms of "whatever" or "lol" when faced with a task of even the least challenge saddens me as an educator.

I am professionally and personally responsible for maintaining enthusiasm and involvement until the last day. I sure hope I do a good job.So many of my colleagues, though, are even capable of falling prey to the abuliac (see: "abulia," nineteenth-century Spanish literary reference) eighteen-year-old heads lolling before them like bladders on a stick. How do we keep them plugged in? Showing a film can be enlightening: reading guides, comprehension questions (especially for a foreign language film without subtitles, in my particular case), small group debates, character sketches, a diary page from the antagonist, etc., can all be great follow-ons to viewing a film. Showing 5 in three weeks, though? You should be fired. If you go out with a whimper, why shouldn't the students? If you keep teaching--and I mean teach, teach like there's no tomorrow, folks--students keep learning. It's amazing. We are powerful. We are meaningful. Our students have spent most of the last 365 days with us and love us. We love them, too. Why do we let each other down, year after year? We're bound to stumble, but get back up. If you stay on the ground, you can get trampled.
-(1/lol)