As I type my first draft, my arms are sore from shoveling out from Weather Doom VIII. By the time I send in my final draft, we’ll have moved on to Snownami IX over the weekend. When will it end?
Not soon enough if you’re part of public education! The last month has been a series of starts and stops, late starts and early outs, snow days and flexible learning days. I’d give anything for two consecutive days of normal classroom operations!
Last week, on a rare full day with 50-minute classes, I worked with a section of 8th-graders on persuasive writing. It is one of my favorite things to teach because it engenders fantastic classroom discussion. Students don’t always realize they’re learning valuable persuasive techniques through the debates we engage in, and it can get loud sometimes, but it’s a blast.
The students’ first paper is on a rule they want changed or adjusted. They had done some prewriting on their topics and come up with three reasons for change as well as three things the opposing side might say. Now it was time to write a rough draft. However, I like to spend a day writing an essay with and for them to model the organization necessary in a paper of this type. My topic: why we should never make up school days at the end of the year.
Every year on this day, I try to choose a topic that is relevant to my kids. In the past, we’ve gone over the dress code, passing time between classes, and a couple years ago, adding flexible learning days. So this year’s topic brought out some passion. Even the kids are starting to admit they just want to get their school days in now rather than even think about June when, we hope, the sun will be shining and the grass will be showing.
I was telling the kids how they should write their papers with the idea of giving them to the people who might effect change on their topics, whether it was their parents, teachers, etc. After all, the dress code was adjusted a couple years ago because of student protest and using good persuasive techniques to point out flaws in the old system. When I mentioned this, a couple students said I should use the essay we wrote to do the same. “Put it in your column,” came the suggestion.
Hmm, not a bad idea. I’ve spent time in this space in the past talking about calendars and different ideas for making up missed time. When I first began teaching, we never talked about making up days. Then, when it was decided we’d better make sure we’re in school enough, we always tacked them on the end of the year. That was a disaster, so we moved to make-up days scheduled during the year. Now we’ve arrived at flexible learning days, but the state only allows five of those to count toward mandated days. So what do you do in a winter of discontent like this one?
The easy answer is not to add on to the end of the year. Some people might suggest that something in that vein will give us more time to get curriculum done. That might have a grain of truth, but not all days in a school year are created equally. By mid-May, it becomes difficult to corral learning. A former superintendent once told me he didn’t understand the big deal about teaching in June. I invited him to come and teach my class in June, but he failed to take me up on the offer.
Toward the end of the year, my experience has taught me that group projects, speeches, and presentations are the best option. Students have the opportunity to demonstrate skills they’ve learned throughout the year, we show off our learning, and I don’t have to try to put forth new concepts to kids whose minds have entered vacation mode.
Listen, we’re told all the time that student contact days are important. And they are. I want to see my kids every day. I want to interact and guide them. But it just doesn’t always work out when Mother Nature intrudes (or power outages or floods or train derailments). And this is where flexible learning (or eLearning as some districts call it) is so wonderful.
I hear people complain that it’s not true teaching on those days. Sure, some days, I have kids continue on a project we had started or read a story and answer questions or write a blog. It’s hard to teach a new concept via a computer. BUT! I’m starting to look into some different options, on the suggestion of a student, where I could interact directly, using something like Google Hangout, with my students. I get emails on flex learning days, but it might be easier to walk them through things live, face-to-face.
We’ll keep getting better at eLearning as we go. I loved the comments of Dr. Funk, the superintendent in Albert Lea. He noted that while the state only credits five days, his district will keep doing flex learning beyond that. They have days to spare above the state minimum, and he still views what happens as student-teacher interaction and a learning tool that is preparing our kids for a technological future.
So there are some of the thoughts we discussed in class. I sometimes learn as much from my students as they do from me; kids have great ideas, and I shouldn’t tell them to do something if I won’t do it myself! With that in mind, maybe I’ll write some upcoming columns based on their ideas from their essays, touching on issues that might be relevant or might help you remember your own school days. We’ll see what they produce for me, and I hope we can continue learning together, maybe even on consecutive days or, heaven forbid, a full week!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is sodalist, which means a member of a fellowship or association, as in, “He became a sodalist in the group trying to change some of the outdated rules at school.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!