TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH STYLE

I hope my classroom – and my teaching – has “style”. When the students enter my room, I’d like them to think, “Wow, this place has some style and taste.” We often think of classrooms as drab and dreary places, but does it have to be that way? Why can’t a classroom for teenage English scholars have some panache, some feeling of youthful and street-smart chic? And why can’t a teacher, even an elderly and furrowed one, have a little style in his bearing and behavior? Why can’t he wear sprightly bow ties and impeccably pressed shirts, as much as to announce, “This teacher has some technique, boys and girls”? Why can’t I show a sort of flamboyant confidence and manner, as if to say to the scholars, “This is the way I live, and it’s the way I read and write, too – with style -- and you can too”?