Malcolm Gladwell famously posited that it takes 10,000 hours or more of practice to make someone an expert, and the way I figure it, I've done my time in teaching.
So, as we enter the last couple weeks of school and the teacher-for-a-day lesson ideas start to come in, "Come talk to me!" I always tell the kids. "I've been doing this job a long time, and I've got some mad teaching skills. I'm ready to help!"
"I want to teach the class to make a pillow fort for my lesson," a student told me today.
"Hmmm," I responded, "what will you use for the hands-on part of the lesson?"
She gestured grandly to the four pillows I have over by the windows.
"That doesn't really seem like enough for everybody," I said.
Her face fell.
"What if..." I continued, thinking out loud. "What if we made little pillows so that they could create models of their forts?"
She looked skeptical.
"Hand me a piece of paper," I said, grabbing some scissors. I folded the paper in half and then cut it in half. I stapled it closed on three sides. "Does this look about the right size?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Now we need some stuffing." I looked around the room and my eyes landed on a tissue box. I pulled a few out, wadded them loosely, and gently pushed them into the pouch. A couple more staples produced a pretty little paper pillow.
Now the student was smiling. "Do you think this will work?" I asked.
"I really do!" she replied.
After we talked a bit about presentations and rubrics, she returned to her seat to finish her planning.
On the way out the door at the end of class, I saw her show the prototype to a classmate. "I'm doing pillow fights for my lesson," she said, "and these are the pillows we're going to make!"
"That's actually pretty genius," said her friend.
Genius? Perhaps, but I prefer to think of it as expertise.
The first kid looked at me, and I gave her a chin nod.
"Thanks," she told her friend.
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