Let Them Think So

To round out the year, our sixth graders are doing a series of mini-projects that they have selected themselves. Today I was checking in with a student who was getting ready to pick his final activity of the year. 

"Which project are you going to do?" I asked him.

"Just to make you happy, I'm going to do... Teacher for a Day!" he answered.

"Yay!" I cheered. "That does make me happy! But how did you know it would?"

"Because, obviously, you're a teacher," he told me. "Of course you would be happy for someone else to do it for you."

At Least We Got That Straight

This morning I opened an electronic message from a student that was sent yesterday. "Do we have any asynchronous work?" it read. "I can't find any."

As luck would have it, the student walked in the door at just that moment. "I was just reading your message," I told him. "No assignments yesterday-- it was a holiday!"

"Thanks," he said. "To be honest I have no idea what any day is anymore," he laughed.

"But," I added, "you are missing that mini-project that was due a couple of weeks ago. And you have another one coming up today."

"I haven't had time to finish that," he said quickly.

"Really?" I asked. "Why were you looking for new work yesterday, when you knew you had this to do?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. 

"I guess you just like to know what you're not doing!" I shook my head.

"That sounds about right," he nodded.

Flying Over the Chesapeake

 Riddle: What do you call a bird that flies over the Chesapeake?

A bay-gull!

Look what I made today:

Growth Mindset

After an afternoon spent battling mugwort, just the latest skirmish in an 11 season war, I came home, scrubbed the dirt from beneath my nails and turned to the internet. There I found a source for mugwort seeds (!) (noooooooooooooo!), but also several articles on the medicinal and culinary benefits of the very weed that has been the bane of my garden from the moment I began to clear it for planting. 

I want to appreciate this plant, I do, and I am impressed that it can be used to treat congestion, stress, headaches, poison ivy, and even breech births, not to mention stir-fried, added to soups and salads, mochi and rice cakes, used to season goose and even to bitter beer instead of hops. I want to flip my perspective and see mugwort as a crop instead of an invader, or at least a volunteer, but...

I’m just not there 

Yet!

Not Fair

 What do you call 52 degrees and rainy on the first day the pool is open?

Try to Remember

I was talking up the teacher-for-a-day activity this morning, trying to encourage more kids to design a fun lesson and take over the class during the last couple weeks of school. In the past it's been a great way to end the year, novel, engaging, and very student-directed, but this year concurrent learning has put a bit of a damper on the project and fewer kids have stepped forward. So there I was, really pitching it, giving examples of past lessons. 

"There was a great one on bottle flipping!" I said. "I know that was a thing a while ago, but it was fun." 

 "A while ago?" said one kid incredulously. "Try five years!" 

 "Was it really that long ago?" I marveled. "Well, it doesn't seem like it to me!" 

 "Five years was a looooooong time ago!" he insisted. 

 "To you, sure," I conceded, "but to me? Not so much."

"How can time be different?" he scoffed.

"Think about it," I said. "I'm about five times your age." And there I paused, because that itself seemed impossible, even to me. Then I pressed on. "So, to me? Five years seems like one year seems to you." 

I thought it made perfect sense, and I had actually had a similar conversation with a student in the class before. She was contesting my suggestion that she add more information about her current life to her letter to her future self. "I think I'll remember everything about myself," she shrugged. "It's me! And it's only six years in the future."

Really?" I said. "Six years ago you were six. Do you remember everything about that?"

She swallowed and lowered her eyes. "No," she admitted. 

"That's all I'm saying," I told her. "Trust me: you'll appreciate the detail."

And I know that she will, because there are times when I read back over my own little time capsule that this blog has become and have no recollection either of the event I documented or the people I was writing about. In fact, in a few years, I'm sure I'll have no idea which kids these were.

Best of the Best

Noon today found me telling my homeroom students how much I appreciated them. They were willingly working on an activity where they imagine that one of the United Nation Global Goals had actually been achieved; the task was to describe that world in poetry, essay, narrative, or visual art. I played John Lennon's Imagine as they worked on descriptions of a world without poverty, social injustice, pollution, economic disparity, limited education and health care. "You guys are definitely one of the best homerooms I've ever had!" I told them, and I meant it. "You always give the activities a chance, and you usually see their value. It's amazing!"

"What were your other TAs like?" someone asked.

"Oh, I've had some good ones-- we have sung and danced and crafted and created and worked hard, but what's really amazing is that our TA has never even al been in the same room, and we've had a great year."

"How many TAs have you had?" asked another student.

"Twenty-nine!" I answered, and they were duly impressed.

"What about me?" one kid joked. "Am I the smartest, best student you ever had?"

"You are definitely in the top 3000!" I told him.