Flexibility and Eating

Tuesdays bring another day and another pair of observers.  (I have one pair Monday/Friday, the other Tuesday/Thursday).  Before class started, I was talking to one of them about some of the differences in working with this type of student population and having to let go of certain things.  I told her how hard it can be to have class discussions.  Take all the kids in a normal classroom that don't respond and put them in one room yadda yadda that's my class.  She then made a really important point about flexibility.  After class started, I showed the students a few short videos about how to use Pepper's Ghost to create ghosts in our own haunted house.  Originally I told my observers that we'd most likely go over to the woodshop and measure some of the space.  And then I ate my words.  My class had an awesome discussion about what we were learning and how we could use it.  Then one girl asked, "Can we look through the costumes for ideas?"  Um...yeah. Absolutely.  Welcome to the learner-centered classroom.

Dress-up ensued.  Ideas shared.  I ended up doing the same thing with most of the rest of my classes.  It's amazing how fast you can get a bunch of tough teenage boys to start putting on wigs and dresses.  The highlight was surprisingly at the end of the day during 6th period.  I knew that we were going to have a fire drill when we had 15 minutes left of class, so I gave the kids a heads up.  The next thing I knew we were all picking out the craziest outfits we could to wear to walk outside in.  Students that think they would never perform put on quite a show, some of them even embodying characters that would wear such costumes.

During my conference period today I ran into a student that has had a lot of changes since last year.  Once upon a time, teachers were shocked when I nominated her for student of the month after her attitude started to change with me and she started helping us with our haunted house last year.  After a few bumps and a life changing experience, she is back this year in school with a completely new attitude.  Two teachers nominated her for student of the month this month.  When I walked with her for a moment, she looked up at the wall where the graduates pictures are and said, "I'm trying to get my picture up there."

Later, I had a student from last year return to my 4th period class.  I made the mistake of thinking I could just pick up where I left off with him.  He seemed bothered by something, almost sad, and eventually left on his own and went up to the office.  It seems he just felt like he needed to get out of there.  I had to remind myself what it took to get through to him last year.  Now I have a place to start and hopefully I can start building him back up again.