A Happy Accident

It's been a wild few weeks for me as I've settled into a new school, and have been eager to earn the respect of my coworkers and students. I was getting prepped for one of my classes the other day, all set to complete a lesson on figurative language. The day before, they had begun some worksheets on personification and hyperbole. Challenging, but not too much; pretty standard fare, but (at least in my opinion) interesting enough to get them engaged. This was to be the last day of this particular lesson, when potential calamity struck.

Turns out I left the entire stack of their worksheets at home – I had nothing on hand to do with them for the period, and precious few materials available except a worksheet they had done previously and a pad of looseleaf paper. Rather than panic, I jumped a few days ahead in my mind and told the class that today, rather than do the worksheets, they would be putting what they had learned to work by composing an original piece of poetry this period. I didn't mention the reason for it, and simply told them that because of it, we'd be doing something different today.

The rules were simple enough – there was no length requirement for the work, and no restrictions as to the subject matter (my only request was to keep the language clean). The poem, however, had to include a sample of each of the figurative terms we had previously discussed – a simile or metaphor, a hyperbole, and an example of personification. I explained the rules and let them go to work.

The work may not have been particularly inspired (I got a lot of ditties of the “Roses are red...” variety), and many of them missed some of the figurative elements, but the important thing is that they all, including students who had been reluctant to participate, were engaged in a creative activity. Even though I didn't require it, many of them attempted to make their work rhyme, and were constantly asking me and each other for rhymes for various words. All told, I got more out of this emergency exercise than the one I had originally planned.

Mark Twain once quipped, "It takes me about three weeks to write an impromptu speech." But it takes more than careful planning to be spontaneous, it takes a desire to do so. Part of me knew the worksheet was really grabbing the kids' attention, but I was too focused on staying organized and committed to my lesson plan to drop it and move on. It took a mishap to get things back on track.

I shall have to arrange for more such mishaps in the future.