Chocolaty Goodness

It was officially Chocolate Day in room B15 because what could be more engaging than food? My students are so concrete that they need all 5 of their senses lassoed and captivated in order to be edutained. Solution: a lesson using my favorite food source.

We started off with a discussion about different types of nouns that required chocolatey answers:

Then came the queen herself robed in a golden cloak. I made sure that a student who’s never tried a Ferrero Rocher before got to sample one. The price was to give an abstract noun afterwards about the inner feeling that this jewel of hazelnut goodness conjured (bliss, contentment, satisfaction).

Afraid of a riot after only giving out a single Ferrero Rocher, I had to offer more chocolate to the suddenly hungry masses. I posted them with Forest Gump’s simile, “Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get next”, and had them analyze the heck out of it. Only the groups who were actually discussing the many meanings behind the quote got to have an assortment, rather than a box of chocolates.

The boxes of chocolates were for the groups with the best explanations.

I feel a little guilty treating my students like performing seals at Sea World, but I’m hoping they grasp the bigger simile here: that learning is just as fulfilling, sustaining, and delicious as chocolate. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Being Back at Middle School

Pros- It's like the best day you had in middle school: acing that Algebra quiz, your crush giving you an encouraging smile during passing period, and making that one hit that clinched the game in PE...but on steroids. Gone are the awkwardness and crushing insecurities, only to be replaced by a self-assuredness that comes from age and doing what you love. 

Yesterday was one of those rare days where everything that could go right, went in that fortunate direction. And in the reflective high at the end of a perfect school day, I remembered a passage from Where the Red Fern Grows (yes, Hannah, I do remember junior high, I remember it vividly). Wilson Rawls describes such a day as "one of those days when a man feels good, feels like speaking to his neighbor, is glad to live in a country like ours, and proud of his government". It was strange to feel my 26 year old self being transported back into Ms. McAllister's English class, reading that passage in my 7th grade body. As Jessica put it, we never really do change completely, but instead add on more layers to our existing ones, like a stackable Russian doll. I not only remembered that 12 year old girl inside of me, but I was her again for one fleeting moment.

Con- Yesterday was also picture day. Despite taking 2 shots (the 2nd one granted from begging the photographer) I am far from being satisfied with the result. I may have to post that picture, just to show how bad it was *shudder*.

Monotony

Ever feel like one day just blends into the other? Go to work, come home, eat, TV, sleep, only to wake up to an annoying alarm(s). I've been teaching the story, "Thank You M'am" for 5 years now, conducting the same lesson for 5 periods. It was time to spice things up.

Inspired by my students' illustrations of Mrs. Jones' treatment of Roger (previous post), a trial of Mrs. Jones seemed appropriate. Is this lady, who gave money, food, and temporary shelter to her teenage robber innocent? Or does her actions of kicking this robber and dragging him to her abode make her guilty of assault and kidnapping?

Mrs. Jones' trial went as following:

1. Put on your lawyer hats and choose one side that you wish to represent.

2. A head lawyer from each side explains what happened on that fateful night.

3. Have a 10 min debate using quotes from the story as your evidence.

4. Have Mrs. Jones on the stand (a student volunteer who was subjected to the bright glare of the overhead projector light in a darkened classroom) and each side questions her.

5. Closing statements were made by volunteering laywers.

I think my favorite part of the trial was being able to slam my gavel down and yelling, "Order in the court!"

Artwork on the fridge

This is a follow up to the dominoes activity my students did on a previous post. They read a story about a woman who catches a teenage boy who tries to rob her. She proceeds to kick him, put him in a half nelson (whatever that is), and drag him to her house. She then cooks for him, talks to him, gives him some money and releases him only to never see him again. 

The assignment was pretty simple- summarizing the main parts of the plot. Except they had to jazz up the events to look like dominoes so that they visually understand that each event is causing the other. They could even jazz it up with illustrations for some extra points.

                                             And then the pictures started getting graphic. 

                                                                   Till it just got bad...

Oweee~

A keeper

Premise: A quirky, teenage girl who dubs herself as Stargirl, experiences her first break up. She keeps a journal which are essentially letters to her ex-boyfriend, Leo. Here's one of her letters:

February 28 

It snowed yesterday. Today the world is white. I put on my boots and walked to Enchanted Hill. It was as pure and perfect as a new sheet of paper. I took one step onto the field and stopped. What was I doing?

The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says: Here-a gift for you. And what do we do? We shovel it. Blow it. Scrape it. Plow it. Get it out of our way. We push it to our fringes. Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump? It's not even snow anymore. It's slush. 

Was that beginning to be us, Leo? I'd rather never see you again than have that happen. We were once so fresh, a dazzling snowfield. Let's promise to each other that if we ever meet again we will never plow or push our new-fallen snow. We will not become slush. We will stay like this field and melt away together only in the sun's good time. 

I backed off carefully, stepping out of the one footprint, and walked away. 

*I can't help but think of my students when visualizing this pristine snow field. Their youth, despite what they may think, is in my eyes not yet marred by mistakes and regrets. Even for an old fogey like me, it's a pretty powerful metaphor for looking at life. 

The Art of Compromise

The biggest shift in my perspective of teaching came from asking "how" instead of "why"? When I asked myself why the kids are the way they are, why they don't do their homework, or why they aren't afraid of me, all it amounted to was a useless amount of hair pulling and eyeball gouging. But when I ask myself how I can get them to do their homework or how I can get them to follow the rules, that's when actual results start appearing. 

Simultaneously, I find myself giving students much more leeway than I ever thought I would. 

• I give them 15 min of class time to do their homework instead of quipping, "It's called HOMEwork for a reason!" 
• Instead of furiously lecturing to a room full of bored students when they fail to read a single chapter of a novel, I type that chapter into a script so that they can act it out with a partner.
•  I've resorted to Pavlovian conditioning as I play Black Eyed Peas' "Let's get it started" at the beginning of an activity to signal that they should be properly arranging their chairs into a circle and the "Mission Impossible" theme song in the end to indicate that they should be cleaning up. They robotically set up and clean at the drop of these songs without me having to utter a word.
• I've accepted the fact that I have a room full of hormonal, amazingly chatty, and brazenly flirtatious 7th graders, and so I now let them discuss answers to grammar exercises, journal entries, a story's summary...basically anything remotely discussable. 
  

It certainly wasn't the way that I was taught, and sometimes I am embarrassed to share the tactics I've resorted to. I'm still clueless when it comes to answering all the hows, but what I can confidently say is that this job is never dull, and for that I am grateful.