By Kara Brown, Education Manager

Beep, beep, beep. Those three tones signaled the end of the school day for my eighth graders. Yet not a single student moved from their seat. All twenty-eight were still at their desks - eyes focused on the novel in their hands, listening intently as I finished a paragraph in The Outsiders.

“Well,” I told the class, “it looks like we need to stop for the day. We’ll pick up here tomorrow.”

A collective groan and a round of protests and pleas rose up from the class. “No Ms. B, can’t we keep going? We can stay; it’s ok!”

This small moment may seem insignificant to some – not quite worthy of being deemed “my favorite teaching moment”, but for me it is. You see, this happened during my first year of teaching. For those that haven’t been there, I’m trying - and failing – to come up with a way to accurately describe exactly what that first year is like. Chaotic, overwhelming, and tiring are the first words that come to mind.

That year, I worked harder than I ever have in my life: creating lesson plans, making up new lesson plans on the fly when that first one didn’t work out, and learning the ropes of classroom management. To top it all off, at the age of 22, I was suddenly a resource for parents who have questions about their 13-year old children. All of it was a shock to the system.

Nevertheless, I persevered, determined that all my students would learn to love reading and writing just as much as I do. Some things are easier said than done, though. I tried my best: we wrote short stories and filmed them, we played games, we moved class outside….but nothing seemed to engage one group - my eighth period.

This was my last class of the day; twenty-eight eighth graders and me crammed into a tiny portable with two chalkboards (yes, chalkboards...in 2007) and a TV strapped to a cart. Everyone was tired by that time of the day, and no matter how much a lesson plan dazzled my other classes, it would fall flat in this one.

Because of these challenges, I lived for tiny moments like the one described at the beginning of the post – moments when I could say “Aha! They get it…and they’re enjoying it!” This one moment was proof positive that my students weren’t just passively listening to the book...they were lost in the novel, caught up in the battle between the Greasers and the Socs, and rooting for their newfound friend, Ponyboy.