0 Comments
I'm half-way through the student presentations, and this is about the time when I fill up with pride. I have students who dedicated 9 weeks to raising money for wonderful causes, helping animal shelters promote pets to be adopted, volunteering at the senior citizen homes, researching how to code, and training for 5k's.
At this point, there's no formative assessment that could calculate how much they've learned. There's no standardized test that could prove that they've met their personal growth objective. For me, it's more of an expression on their face. Hearing them say things like, "It's strange, I was nervous for all of our other presentations, but this one, I wasn't nervous." I know why. Next week is the symposium, that will be my last post. This is the magic. It all really starts coming together this week. My cynicism is low, my inspiration is high, and we're going to get to next week.
Students "built" their presentations this week. I do love me some presentations. The procrastination surfaces though, and the kids who haven't been keeping up with the Rinkenbergers, start to reach out to others because they feel like they're going under. The Pit this week is dealing with the procrastinators and watching the procrastinate. I guess when one is good at something, they tend to stick with it. The Peak of this week was students coming to me ready ahead of time. The glow in their smile, the "let's get'm!" look in their eyes, is enough to start a fire. The Pregress for this week is to finalize the last details of the schedule and advertise the heck out of this project. Facebook, Instagram, local coffee shops and ice-cream joints, have all now received a little flier. Invitations are out. "If you build it, they will come!"
Sometimes during dinner, my family and I discuss the "pit, the peak, and the progress" of the day. This gives everyone in the family a chance to open up about their struggles (the pit), their highlight (the peak) and the progress (something we're trying to get better at).
The Pit of this week was that due to the dynamic nature of the project, I felt like I was being pulled in 115 different directions. Some project concepts are easier to remember while others, no matter what I do, I can't seem to recall. "Remind me again, what's your awesome topic?" I must have asked that a few dozen times. Also, finding topics for them to research can get a little tricky. Keeping an open mind helps. The Peak of the week was when a student runs their mouth on something that they've discovered that they didn't know yesterday. "Mr. V, did you know that Germans in World War 1 were blah, bla blah, blah bla?" I don't remember the specifics, but the kid does, and that's what's important. My brain can't hold on to World War facts, but I sure as well remember my HS gym locker combination 15-33-15. Crazy. The Progress for the week is that I'm trying to get better at not looking for flaws. Writing at this age and ability level is all over the place. I had to remind myself to focus on a few simple things for the kids I know to be low level writers and then challenge the kids at the higher end with more technical features. "Why doesn't he have to use MLA documentation?" "Well, I'm asking you to use MLA documentation because you're a really good writer, this is your next step." Plus, the other kid can't even spell MLA, so we'll let him work on writing a monster of a topic sentence and worry about MLA stuff later.
This week, we started plans for the invitations and fliers. We designed these last year, and we're going to roll with the same concept. The idea is that I'll drop them off at local business, students who get invited to the symposium night are offered 5 invitations themselves, and the rest are distributed among students. We are also planning for the art teacher to do an art exhibit the night of the symposium, so there's that detail that needs to be brought into the mix.
Either way, it's time for spring break. I'll be working on grading motivational narratives, interview questions, and research articles over the long week. I guess I get a break from teaching, but I don't get much of a break from grading this week. Maybe all of the pain medicine will help improve scores...maybe. So, I'm told all of the time, "kids and their technology these days." "I mean, my neighbor's 3-year-old knows how to navigate an iPad." Apparently though, there's something stopping them from creating a profile on a website. I must have helped 40+ kids today make a profile on Weebly.com, because they didn't know how to click "allow."
Part of being a teacher is repeating yourself. My wife always says to me, "Yeah, you already told me that" because I apparently have that hard-wired in at this point. The frustrations comes when, to no fault of their own, I'm able to handle the first 5 or 10 requests about, "what do I do again," but somewhere around request 13 or 14 I start to wince. Then, around request 20, I start to loose it. Some, are off and running, while others really need a hand. They need a hand not because they can't figure it out on their own, but mostly because they've never been asked to figure it out on their own. Somewhere we're told, "that's not good teaching." The sight is made to be intuitive, sure there are some snags here and there, but out of this will develop my most favorite part of working in a class of students, and that is students-helping-students. Without the struggle, we can't have reward, for a reward with out struggle is a merely a gift. Things had to slow down a little for this week. PARCC testing occupied a lot of this week, which unfortunately killed some of the buzz on the project. I'll have to inject some excitement into the project next week, and I plan on doing so by advertising the plans for some of the student projects. I did add a "Calendar of Events" page to this website today that is synced with a Google Calendar I have. That's where I plan to start on Monday. Getting the kids to find the HTML code of the calendar and copying it into the tool on Weebly, might not be too easy, but I'm going to give it a try. It's really fluid and neat once it gets posted, because the updates on the calendar reflect on the website. I think some of the students will really like this functionality.
We can only see with our own eyes, and sometimes I wonder if only I were able to see the world through the eyes of my students I'd better be able to tell them just what they need to know in their own language. I call this student language. It serves me nothing, if I have passion and brilliance planned for a project yet have no means to deliver it to them or if the means is outside of their realm of comprehension. So, I get other students to do it for me. Today I invited 8th graders to teach my 7th grade class. I reached even into the high school and grabbed up two freshmen all in an effort to take the day off and let students help students. After a little light "house-keeping," as I call it, you know reminders about due dates and an explanation of why these strangers were in the room, we dove right into it. Past students shared their project experiences, answered questions, and gave advice on current student project ideas. At this point, most of my current 7th graders are bubbling over with ideas. One student wants to try out a series of diets to see how it affects her body, another wants to explore a genre of music. I have a young man in one class who wants to research books that have been converted to movies and make a webpage dedicated to the process. They were given a handout to help them flush out some ideas, and a parent permission slip so that they can get their parents to collaborate with them. A lot of this project is about a support system. These don't have to be parents all of the time either. Different projects call for different kinds of support. A good group of friends can be just as supportive, if not more, than a set of parents.
|
Mr. VThis is room 212, and these are my students. I act simply as a recorder to the amazing pursuits of my students. That is all. Archives |
Proudly powered by Weebly