Mr. S. was everyone's favorite teacher at Sacred Heart middle school. If you walked into his class and just sat there for five minutes, you would know. You would know by the way the students waved their hands in the air, eager to answer a question. You would know by the way the other students listened as one student told his or her opinion about something. You would know by the way the students laughed, as they often did throughout the class period. As soon as you entered the room you would feel the magic happening: students were learning in here.

As a new teacher at Sacred Heart, I wanted to know Mr.S's secret. How did he get 30 rambunctious seventh graders to pay attention for two hours? How did he get the normally shy students to volunteer to read aloud? How did he get them to care about poetry and reading novels?

Mr. S's class was fun because he had so much fun teaching it. He loved talking to the students and he took the time to find out what they were interested in and what they did after school or on weekends. He always tied their interests into the class material. When students expressed an interest in music, he organized a poetry reading where poems could be sung or rapped when read aloud to the class. He made class exciting--whether that meant having class outside on a nice day, reading with animation in his booming voice, or discussing novels or poems in a way that students could relate to.

I wasn't surprised that Mr. S's sense of humor appealed to the students. What surprised me was that he demanded more out of the students than any of the other teachers did, and they loved him more for it. Despite the fact that Sacred Heart is an inner-city school with 90% of the students speaking a language other than English at home, the sixth grade was reading Hamlet. And the sixth grade absolutely loved reading Hamlet. Sonnets they had written lined the halls. At lunch in their homeroom, they would continue to debate issues about Hamlet that had been brought up in class.

As the year progressed, I realized Mr. S's "secret" was very simple: respect your students. Respect them enough to know that what they do at home is important to them, and they need to relate it to what they are working on in school. Respect them enough to expect them to participate and to contribute all that they can. Mr. S. got the students excited about learning. He taught them more than just how to construct a sentence or analyze literature: he instilled in them a love for reading that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. And he taught me that a love for teaching can translate into a class of students who love to learn.

Kita Murdock
American University