Too Much Rope?

                Had and interesting couple of weeks recently. Since the CSTs have been all completed, I have been focusing mostly on project-based activities for my students. One that I recently did, a CD Project that I got from my first CP, seemed like it would be a good fit. I changed things around for the project to fit in with the students, and I felt that things were going great. The final portion of the project was for the students to present what they had researched for the project. When the day came for one of my periods to present, it turns out that nearly half of the class was not prepared to present. I found this out through random assignment, picking the students from the roster at random. After hearing multiple students saying they weren’t ready to present, I asked the class as a whole who had completed their projects. When I saw that only half were fully prepared, I was a little disheartened. I had lectured my class about my expectations and the need to be prepared for the presentations multiple times. I suppose that, with the amount of time that I had given the students, maybe it was just enough rope for several of them to hang themselves with? Thankfully my other class that had done the project was more prepared, and I was spared having to talk to them about getting their acts together, since this project counted for so much.

Got a LOT of Student Excitement!

                 One of the closing plans I did with my world history class was to do a history vs Hollywood project. We picked a time period for the class, in this case WWII, and we learned about a specific event. I Chose the Battle of the Bulge, as it was something different from D-Day, which they had already learned about. We spent a portion of the class going over the historical notes of the battle, and then began watching an episode of Band of Brothers. It was very well received by the class, as they were all engaged by the film. We had a great closing discussion comparing history to Hollywood. Many of the students actually wanted to keep watching the series, and thought that it did an awesome job of presenting different portions of the war. They even wanted to keep doing this style of project, watching further episodes and comparing them to what actually happened in history. Definitely a good feeling that I created a fun lesson for them that they would want to continue to use to learn!

What’s in a Face?

One of the things that I have notice about my school site are the clocks. In the classrooms, there is a clock like in all classrooms. However, the thing that stands out for me is that they are all digital. Not one of them is a standard clock with hands pointing towards the hours and minutes. While this can be a bit of a blessing when checking the time really fast during instruction, I feel that it is also a loss. To me, the clocks being digital shows a loss of the skill of telling time from a normal clock. I know as a child, this was very important for the students to be able to do, and there were many a math lesson that was based around the telling of the time with a normal clock. Now, every student has a cell phone, and I don’t think that I have seen a single one without a digital clock on it. It seems to me that it is not important anymore for students to be able to tell time by actually looking at the hands on the clock or on a watch. I am not exactly sure how to think about this, but it just irks me in some way that I cannot quite explain.

 Working with Unique Personalities

                 To say that each teenager has their own personality would be a massive understatement. However, it is interesting when you have to place those personalities in the context of the classroom. I recently had a student who had shown themselves to be a really quick learner, and is pretty interested in the content material. However, he recently started to not do any work that required him to finish it at home. This had not really been an issue in the past, so I was curious to see what was happening with him. As he explained it, he was tired of being motivated by teachers, and felt that he could do everything at his own pace. He stated that he hated people telling him what to do, and that he understood everything that he was taught. It was an interesting conversation with him, with me feeling reassured that he ‘got’ the info, but also worried about his grade slipping since he wasn’t turning in his work. We were able to come to an interesting deal – I accept late work up to a point, with some of the score being deducted for it being late. I told that student that if he gets in what he is missing, then his overall grade would not suffer so much. The entire encounter was fairly eye-opening in learning to work with different students.