Nail Biter

One of the student-presented lessons today was called "My anti-nail-biting seminar." It consisted of a little video of a baby who grows up happily until... he starts biting his nails! There was also a slide show and an interactive online quiz. It was well-planned and well-executed, but not well-received. It just so happened that there were a lot of defensive nail-biters in the class who were not just grossed out by the pictures of paronychia, but dismissive of the dangers of salmonella and e-coli infection. "I've been biting my nails all my life!" stated one kid, "I've never had a problem!"

I knew what he meant. I'm a nail-biter myself, and I confess to harboring the notion that chewing on my fingers actually strengthens my immune system by exposing me to small doses of pathogens. Of course the same could be said about picking your nose and, you know.

Whether my theory is true or not,  I certainly don't want to encourage others to bite their nails, especially kids in my class. That would be wrong, but maybe we could accept nail-biters for who they are, rather than villainizing them.

I mean, us.

Every Student Succeeds

It has been so interesting watching my students design and deliver lessons to their peers. The process reveals a lot about what they think education is and is not. One of the most successful presentations so far was by two girls who made a video of themselves baking cookie bars, then designed an online quiz about their ingredients and procedures, and then gave samples and the recipe.

It was fun, engaging, and informative, but when it came to the assessment, it reminded me of one of the biggest challenges we have as educators. We are trying to provide our students with skills and knowledge they will use outside of the walls we are generally confined by. In this case, short of having everyone bake some cookie bars and bring them in, can we really know how effective the lesson was?

Which brings me to the most chaotic experience of the day. Two well-intentioned students planned to teach their classmates some simple origami. They had tips and directions on the interactive whiteboard, and printed instructions for each pair. "If you get confused," they directed the class, "raise your hand and we'll come help you." It was a relatively small group of 12, but they did not anticipate the questions or the level of frustration. Nor did they appreciate the difficulty of simply explaining a complex task. The class quickly descended into chaos, and I stepped in to restore order. Even so, there were not a lot of folded pecking birds by the end of the session.

I was pushing in chairs and tidying up as the two presenters packed their books to go to their next class. "Wow," said one, "I have a lot more respect for teachers now!"

I raised my eyebrows and laughed a little.

"I know" said his partner. "Hardly anyone got it!" She frowned. "Will that hurt our grade?"

Catching On

The Teacher-for-a-day thing was the talk of the team today. How wonderful it was to see my students so engaged just one week before school ends.

AND

I am really looking forward to learning how to:

create a photo meme
bake chocolate chip cookie bars
organize my binder
play poker
decorate dolphin-themed donuts
calculate slope
do yoga
make a lava pen
draw anime eyes
and
rap like Chief Keefe (the clean version!)

Lessons start tomorrow-- stay tuned for future updates!

Teacher for a Day

With the last big project of the year dragging on for some, and others finishing all the enriching activities I can give them, I decided to give them a "BIG opportunity" to finish the year. Some picked up the pace to see what it might be, and one student was even a little disappointed when I handed him the description. "The BIG opportunity is a worksheet?" he sighed.

"But sooooo much more," I told him. "Read on!"

What it is is the chance to design and teach a lesson to their classmates, a lesson on anything they might want to share, and anything the other students might like to learn. What is your objective? It reads. What do you want us to learn? And then, What is the assessment? How will you know we've got it?

Some kids were wide-eyed at first. "I don't want to do this in front of everybody!" one student told me, just a few minutes after he sang a lively song that the whole class could obviously hear.

"You don't have to teach it, but you do have to design it," I said. "Then we'll talk," I winked at him.

To be honest, we have neither the time nor the attention span for everyone to take this assignment its completion, but so far?

We're going to learn some lego-building, origami, and soccer skills.

I can't wait!

The Life in Her Years

On Sunday mornings, it is our habit to take the dog and walk just a little under a mile away to our neighborhood farmer's market. But our old dog is getting persnickety about her food and a little recalcitrant about exercise, and so when she refused to eat her breakfast this morning, and the thermometer read 85 at 10 AM, we decided that we would leave her at home this time.

It was with a bit of a heavy heart that I waved good-bye to her and locked the door behind us, and we started up the steps that lead out of our complex in silence. "This is the beginning of the end," Heidi said sadly and we both stopped.

"Let's go get her," I said.

Heidi's eyes lit up, but she was unsure. "It's so hot," she reminded me, "and she hasn't eaten."

"We'll go slow," I said, "in the shade. And bring lots of water."

"And treats," Heidi finished.

And so we did.

Standard Operating Procedure

Standardized test season has almost ended, but we do have a few re-take sessions on our school calendar for next week. Personally? I can't wait until it's all in the rear view.

This year, a phenomena that had me scratching my head a bit was all the students traipsing through the hallways with little fleece blankets draped over their heads and shoulders. Allowed by someone, but only on test days, I loathed the parade of clutched arms and hunched shoulders on the way to the test rooms each morning. It seemed the very definition of distraction. "It's so we can sleep when we finish our test," a student explained to me.

The sixth graders were denied the blankets, although some tried. "You don't need that for a test!" I heard more than one colleague remark. Still, I wondered if we were being curmudgeons. What harm could a blanket do?

Our school has a very diverse population of students, many of whom receive accommodations for their test. These special circumstances rang from the use of a bilingual dictionary to a human being reading the test out loud to a single student. Of course these measures are meant to level the playing field, so to speak, and more importantly, to ensure that the test is an accurate measure of each student's knowledge and skills in a particular content area.

There are rules about the accommodations, of course, the main one being that a student must have had access to and used them throughout the school year. The philosophy of such a policy is two-fold: students must demonstrate a need and a willingness to use their accommodations.

Now where does that leave blankets?

Live and Unplugged

As the year draws to a close, I was feeling a little sentimental in my last class today. Despite their understandable, if somewhat unfocused and rather disruptive, extra energy, as I walked through the room redirecting student after student I realized that I would indeed be sorry to see them go.

"I'm going to miss you guys in two weeks," I said with sincere affection in my voice.

The hubbub subsided to a busy hum that was broken by an inquiry.

"Why?" exclaimed someone. "Are you going somewhere?"