I had a pretty personal and important talk with the class today. They were scheduled to write their unit final, but I’ve set it aside until next week for now. In reading through and checking the student blogs last night, I came across one blog entry that included hateful comments about a group of people. Because this blogging process is one which requires a fair amount of independence on the part of the student and trust on my part, this was something I knew could happen. I have been really pleased that the other students have been mature and reasponsible in their blogging, but this was overtly rude writing that was done with intention. I have talked with that student and consequences will follow.

For the class, though, I was reading in their posts that, for the most part, they didn’t learn anything new about Equality but enjoyed reading new stories of people who suffer from intolerance or discrimination. The discussions have been good and they’ve had the time to think their way through their perspective but they haven’t been moved to any new sense of duty or responsiblity when it comes to equality and judging others. I don’t feel that I’ve done a good enough job of challenging them on this issue. It would be easy to move on to other things, but after this particular incident, with a student writing hateful material, I think we can all benefit from a little lesson in history, so that’s what I did, I taught a history class today.

 I was a History teacher in my previous position so I enjoyed sharing this side of the curriculum with them in an English context. It is somewhat unfortunate that some of our country’s history isn’t taught until students are in Grade twelve. By that point, a lot of their personal ideas and perspectives are somewhat solid by then. We’ve all been guilty of this at times, though, of thinking we know something without actually having much information or experience.

 We will continue on Monday and I hope the students who were here today will think on this all a bit. It’s too important to not make sure they understand.