First project: Getting to Know You

     I started off in September with a project called “Getting To Know You” that I got from my friend of many years Linda Guthrie.  The goal of the project is to get to know the other students in the class.  This knowledge is then presented in description, graphic, and oral forms.  

     I began the project with large and small group discussions of what it means to get to know someone.  Students reflect on what they want others to know about them and what they want to know about others as they get to know them.  Thinking about their own qualities and how they want to be seen by others is a red meat topic for adolescents which makes this a winning project.  Writing on this topic is one part of the project.

     From these discussions students develop a set of questions they would ask other students in an effort to get to know them.  They use these questions to interview a certain number of other students in the class, taking notes on the answers.  These interviews are the basis for multi-paragraph essays on individual students.  Some of these were done on the laptops.

     Again through discussion the students develop a set of simple preferences that each student can express, such as “favorite movie” or “favorite food.”  Each student then asks every other student to answer these questions, and the results are entered into a grid.  This information can be graphed, and I asked the three math teachers my students had if they would handle this part of the project.  This had mixed results, but in the best case it resulted in a nice set of graphs of different types.  Students then wrote brief explanations of the data in each graph.
     Another written part of the project asked students to discuss how they thought the class would be during the year ahead.  This also involved some discussion before writing.  

     The final part of the project was to make a podcast or movie of some part of the project--interviews, graphs, etc.  This could have been supplemented by a class blog or small group dramatizations, but it was already getting a little long.

     I really liked this project as a way to start the year.  Students develop a sense of unity as a class.   They got to know students they didn’t know before.  They spent a lot of time talking to each other (which they’re going to do anyway).  There was a nice variety of writing assignments and many possibilities for extension into other media.  The link with the math teachers worked well with one teacher, not so well with the others.  More preparation would be needed on this part next time.

     I look forward to improving this project and using it next year.  It could be adapted for any grade level.

     Next:  Narrative Project on learning about right and wrong.

The view from the ice floe

          Whew!  Another year of seventh grade boys is over!  I have worked my butt off these past two years at Young Oak Kim Academy.  This year was just as hard as the one before, but I was more successful.  I implemented a completely project based curriculum, and I did less yelling.  My classes were still noisy, (and unfortunately I had a neighbor who was very sensitive to noise and called the principal frequently to complain), but they also did a lot of very interesting work, much of it on the computer.  

          For some reason I didn’t have the energy to blog this year, but I was even more engaged in my teaching.  Thanks in part to my friend Linda Guthrie I had a set of five very engaging, high interest projects that corresponded to the writing domains in the district curriculum.  I was actually one of the few teachers to use a project based curriculum at YOKA, notwithstanding the school’s and district’s stated intention to encourage PBL.  I also used the computers extensively, more than most of the other teachers.  My seventh grade boys learned to write and research on the computer, and they produced documents with headings, illustrations, title pages, bibliographies, tables of contents, etc.  Bravi ragazzi!

          My reward for all of this hard work and successful teaching was...to be displaced from YOKA, cut loose to find another school to start over at.  It could have been worse since I did get a RIF notice, but at least that was rescinded.  I’m not happy about having to start over at another school with different classes & students, different colleagues, etc.  I like to stay in one place long enough to be part of the culture.  Teaching is hard enough without having the stress of a new situation.  I can’t help feeling like I’m on a shrinking piece of ice being pushed out towards the deep water.  

          Now this isn’t anyone’s fault (except maybe Ronald Reagan’s).  The school had one too many English teachers, and I have low seniority since I only returned to the district six years ago.  So now I’m looking for a job...calling principals every day...asking for an interview...wondering how they react to my unusual resume (and my obvious advanced age)...hoping I don’t get something too far away or too awful.  

          That’s life on the ice floe.  

          In the meantime, I’m going to write a series of entries for this blog about the past school year, the projects I assigned, the problems I had, the victories I enjoyed.  Stay tuned.

I'm back....and YOKA goes to MOCA

Whew! It's been a while since I posted.  I'll try to bring you up to speed, but first some comments about my field trip last week:

Today the art teacher Mr. Greene and I took about seventy students to the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue.  Before that we also visited the Central Library on Fifth Street, and then we walked up the Library Stairs to Bunker Hill and MOCA.  After visiting the museum we had lunch in the Water Court.  All in all it was a wonderful day.  The students were well behaved and enjoyed the new experiences, new places, new environments.

This was our second field trip as part of the Pacific Standard Time project in education.  In December we went to Disney Hall to hear the LA Phil rehearsing for their evening concert.  I love to take students on outings like this.  You can almost literally see them stretching their wings as they encounter a new part of the big world around them.  There is NO substitute for this kind of exposure, and it’s a real loss to our children that field trips have become so rare.

A couple of aspects of this trip made a big impression on me.  First of all, their reaction to the art in MOCA was perfectly appropriate to first seeing Rothko or Pollock or Segal or a bent piece of wire or a blue plastic tube.  “This is art?”  “I could do this!” “My little brother could make this!”  “This doesn’t even look like a person!” etc.  But they looked, they discussed, they studied these things.  Who knows what thoughts lodged deep in their minds, only to emerge later as they mature and remember that strange painting they saw on a field trip in 7th grade?

Then at lunch I watched as they sat around the tables at the Water Court among the office workers and executives from the towers of Bunker Hill, eating lunch, chatting, laughing, having a good time.  Mariano was so excited to have had TWO frappacinos, and Luis discovered Angel’s Flight and showed his friends.  At moments like these I can imagine them as grown ups, and that definitely gives a good spin to the backbreaking labor of teaching them in seventh grade.

So although a field trip is a long day on my feet, with a lot of preparation and no duty free moments, it’s well worth the effort.  I hope there will be many more.