It was a great week and I can't really explain why. Maybe it was because on Monday morning I started the class by saying "I KNOW we are going to have a great week." Self-fulfilling prophecy???
Something I tried was they had to write a major assignment based on the movie "The Fast and the Furious". Yes, I could have chosen a movie with more depth and less violence-more analysis and less "fluff" but I chose it because the kids love it. My students had to answer questions, write paragraphs and write a script all based on the movie. During work time-you could hear a pin drop. We had great discussions, animated conversations and lots of "mini" lessons on morality, decision making and "fitting in." So easy, to ignore books or media that we deem to be "invaluable" because of their lightweight content. I think as educators we need to accept the fact that teenagers listen to different music, watch different television shows and movies and read different forms of writing than we do-and that's O.K.
Spend yesterday at a board meeting where the emphasis was on Credit Recovery, Learning to 18 programs, Co-op programs and the literacy test. There seems to be a huge emphasis on "saving" kids that in the past we let slide through the cracks. We are realizing that we need to keep these kids in school, engaged in the curriculum and offer them choices that they are interested in. It's hard for our students to see the big picture-that the next 4 years are going to be an important stepping stone for their future. Their attitude is like Dom's in Fast and the Furious when he says, "I live my life a quarter mile at a time." I think my job in my locally developed classroom is to accept the fact that they live their life by the quarter-mile and try to make that distance so relevant and engaging that they are motivated to stay on the road.
Comments
|
