Oath broken: I forgot what it's like to be a teen

Teaching teenagers every day reminds me that I've forgotten what it's like to be one.

This is of course despite all sacred oaths to myself that I would not, could not commit this atrocity and inflict upon future pupils what I (then) experienced at the hands of other forgetful instructors. (Also known as "fogies," or simply "out of touch oafs.")

Did I get lazy?

Or is it the same as many things--the passage of time blurs the transitions of age until the borders between "what is now" and "what was once" must be spoken of in black and white contrast. Times of personal struggle, contention, debate, and pondering meld into one obscure mass, so that the nuances of these times of turmoil and joy are lost in the grey soup of memory.

(On a side note, I think the best writers know how to pluck moments and feelings from this soup and put them to the page.)

Whenever I sit down to the computer to plan a lesson for the next day, I find 80% of my time is spent in pedagogical rumination on making the lesson relevant and interesting to young people, but at the same time somehow informative and important.

For example, do tweens really want to discuss the plight of Maria, the Mexican immigrant, or the wage gap between men and women around the globe? Probably not--but these topics are important: They teach us tough realities of our world while also opening our eyes, then minds, to solutions to discrimination.

Would that I could set myself into the minds and hearts of my students, or access the mindset of my teenage self once again! With a simple cocktail of relevant, interesting, inspiring, and enlightening info...well, that's a recipe I'll continue to search for.

In the end, the general "recipe" is engagement and activity: No matter how important a lesson, students won't gain much unless the teacher and/or material engages them. It seems students will forget a lot of the details of lessons anyway: I did some some reading up, like here, here, and here, and they support my own experience that lesson details often fade, while memorable moments of engagement, activity, and enlightenment remain.