Just when I thought that the old nightmares from college had finally faded into ancient history, up come the topic of the dreaded cause and effect essay. Fortunately, I wasn’t the one expected to write the thing. Unfortunately, I was the one expected to teach others how to write a cause and effect essay.
I loved having an opportunity to teach at our local high school. My kids weren’t really thrilled with the idea of having their mother teaching class in their hometown but they were coping pretty well. No one was coping really well with the cause and effect essay lesson plan that I had to develop for the upcoming year’s English class.
However, this lesson is part of the curriculum and I had to come up with an effective way to teach a topic that I secretly hated. This proved to be a big obstacle. Give me a subject like poetry or American literature and I will run with it but give me a topic like the cause and effect essay and I fall short.
I guess that the problem lies in my personal lack of interest in this form of writing. I was never one for speeches or for professional writing in general. Business courses make my blood curdle and the very idea of using creative talents to weave a cause and effect essay just makes me a little uneasy.
The uneasiness could be due to the simple fact that I lack the talent necessary to write a good cause and effect essay. This might be due to my waning interest on the subject and my general attitude about business in general. I figured that the best way to face the challenge was to create a lesson plan that involves my view of the topic.
Of course, I wasn’t about to let my student (or even my own kids) know that I secretly loathed the cause and effect essay. This would be simply irresponsible on my part. I planned to act as passionately interested in this topic as I am in literature and poetry. I only hoped that I could pull it off.
Instead of the cause and effect essay lesson plan centering on my views of the topic, I decided to make the plan student-centered instead. The students were given all of the necessary background information and they were instructed to teach me the importance of learning about a cause and effect essay. The kids did such a great job that I’m thinking differently about the topic. I’m even beginning to like it.
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