"You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here..."

25 February 2014: This post's title comes a song that has been in my head since my ENGL 301 class ended today. Here's the story...

My students were peer-reviewing each others' response papers, the first time we've done this in this particular class. The first peer review session is always a little bit tense--will students be willing to be honest with each other? will they be prepared?--but this group handled the task with real skill and charm. They all seemed to enjoy it, too--they liked talking with each other, helping each other.

With about ten minutes left in the class period, I announced that if the groups were finished, they could leave a bit early. And--I am not kidding you here--no one left. Even the group that was done--that had been done--didn't leave. They all stayed until the actual "end of class" time.

And get this--I even had to kind of shoo a couple of groups out of the room.* They were that into talking and working with each other. (Thus, the "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here..." line.)

I don't think I had a single thing to do with this. I just got lucky and had a great group in this class today. (They aren't all always that great...) And I am thankful for that.

*Ordinarily I'd let them stay in the room, but our classroom is mostly used by the Education department, and I have to lock the room when we are finished with it.