"The Giver" inspires sentiments on classroom behavior.

Today I subbed in an 8th grade English class at Royal Oak Middle School. It was a very different experience from what I've grown accustomed to at Ann Arbor Open, as well as having my own Spanish classes at Northwood Elementary. As the bell rang, kids quietly filed in, took their chairs down, and began to read, EXACTLY as was noted in the lesson plans the teacher had left for me. After 20 minutes, they got out their notebooks, and composed letters to elementary school students about why reading is fun and important; again, as noted in said lesson plans. All of this was happening while I, the substitute teacher - whom most teachers must assume are, shall we say, less than capable of running a functional classroom - had nothing better to do than read from "The Giver," which was what I'd be reading with the next four classes. Upon witnessing these students drone though what had the potential to be an enlightening experience, I found this teacher's selection of novels to be rather eerie. For those haven't read it, Lois Lowery's version of Big Brother depicts a society which is entirely prescribed for its citizens. Down to what to do in the event of an impure thought, every action, impulse, and decision has a set of prescribed answers. I immediately found this to be the case for many of the students I was witnessing. (Yes, I say witnessing, because what I was asked to do today had little to do with teaching.) Upon the walls were rules that looked to be written by students, but were as detailed as "cough into your elbow," along with "respect each other," and "raise your hand to speak." Now, I am not challenging the validity of these expected behaviors, nor am I chastising the sense of structure many teacher employ. However, when the ultimate goal is to experience education - that is, to challenge one's self to look at something in a way that he or she may not be accustomed to - it seems like these prescribed actions that many teachers employ seem to be counteractive. I want my students to be able to explore their own thoughts (albeit within some structure I have yet to materialize;) to make the knowledge they create their own.

To be fair, my observations of this class were one day out of an entire school year, at it was a day that the teacher was absent. Obviously, there was value in having her students used to a routine within the structure of her classroom, as there were literally no behavioral problems throughout the day. I would love to see this teacher in action, as she clearly has a grasp of her classroom. However, it just seems to me that the students had a pre-determined expectation coming into the class that they would do a certain amount of work, with little feeling that they would be challenging themselves to get something out of the experience. They were so bogged down by the daily routine that they were able to get through the day as robots.

Every day, I learn something new which points me toward becoming the teacher and person I want to become. Even the days I do nothing more than read the same 20 pages of "The Giver" to four different classes.