Am I the only one who feels like I've been behind? Maybe that's why my posts have been shorter lately, and I've had a harder time keeping up, remembering what's happened, and feeling prepared. Today I felt renewed. I approached my classes with a renewed joy and enthusiasm.
The next project? Superheroes. I created a worksheet for design ideas for the students here. We're starting with designing masks for the students superhero ideas on paper (at least two). Next they are going to use facepaint to paint their favorite idea on their own or someone else's face. I tried a homemade recipe for facepaint tonight. One part water, one part cold cream, two parts cornstarch, a few drops of food coloring. Here's to hoping it washes off their faces.
My first period boys are plugging away making decorations for the Halloween Party. One was catching up on a previous assignment, but he was making progress today. The other three were stapling together rings of black and orange paper. It's long enough to reach halfway around the cafeteria now. They've developed this strange obsession with making it.
Second period I had another pleasant surprise. Remember the kid that used to fight me all the time that I had to ignore to get him to come around? He sat down today and turned to me and said, "I need help." I can't tell you what music that is to a teacher's ear. I know a lot of people are nervous about asking for help, but it is often only then that you can teach someone. I mean, why would we be trying to tell students how to do things they already know? He was so proud of himself when he finished the assignment and I told him how many points he'd earned today. He jumped right in to start the next project.
By 3rd period, I was walking around like I had the coolest job in the world. And then I noticed something magical. One of my students that hasn't been working in weeks, that I have tried everything I could think of to help, on his own, started working. I'm not exactly sure what changed, or what clicked. Last week, he told me that art and theatre wasn't his thing and that he didn't want to do anything. Guess what else? He's SO excited about superheroes. When I mentioned that for a warmup we were going to list off super powers that we thought were cool, he almost jumped out of his chair and said, "Oh I've got a lot of those." He's looking forward to when he catches up and can start on his superhero.
At lunch I talked to the principal about the field trip I wanted to do next month. He gave me the go ahead as long as I raised the money to pay for the buses. He also approved the haunted house and said we could use the woodshop if we moved stuff around. Time to get to work fundraising.
4th period I had a student get really anxious. The other students get really loud and it was upsetting him. He hadn't been feeling well, so I let him go to another class instead to work on stuff. While they are a little loud and crazy, most of the students in that class are getting better at working on their assignments. The rewards I've set up seem to be helping to motivate them.
6th period never ceases to crack me up. One of my students that I've struggled a lot with this semester came down the hallway late to class loudly saying something about not wanting to come to class and the class sucking. Within a few minutes, he was leading everyone else out of class over to the woodshop to start brainstorming ideas. I laughed and said, "I thought this class sucked." "Not today!"
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