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.
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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.
So, the quarter starts next week, and today was a busy day setting up a few details. I have some students who are great people, I have some students that are great students, and I have another kind of student that is both. In the past few weeks, I've been emailing old students who might be interested in making a trip back to their junior high LA classroom to be a leader on a Q and A session.
Wednesday, I'm planning on them coming back to speak from experience and to answer the questions that the students might have about the project. I'm not really sure what to expect because I've never really done anything quite like this before, but I'm sure it'll be great. I have at least 2 students signed up for my 5 classes. One class has 4 students, so that should go over really well. I've emailed all of their coordinating teachers. This whole, "it takes a village to raise" a student concept comes into motion here. I've also emailed the high school building principal because some students are going to need to make the trip from the HS over the junior high to sign in as guests. I think there's something inside of all of this that I'm grateful for. I'm thankful that I have great people to call on, both students, teachers, and administrators, and I'm thankful that the project was meaningful enough to my former students that they'd "want" to come back and talk about it. IT'S CRUNCH TIME! |
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 |
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