One of those days

Note: So we’re 2/3rds into October and I’ve decided to write my first update for the month.  As I exchange e-mails with friends and family about personal topics, I question the value of keeping a blog.  I would love to hear your insights- perhaps it is to maintain a flow of communication with a broader audience, or to disseminate information to everyone at once.  Mostly, I believe a blog should be a fun creative outlet, a forum for storytelling, a place to share thoughts and ideas.  So I will try to get back into the swing of it, since I believe there to still be unexplored value.

Onto the update:

Next week is Halloween, so I went out and bought a sticker book filled with Halloween images.  I had the students draw bats, jack o’ lanterns, spiders, witches, haunted houses, mummies, Frankenstein, and Dracula during English class.  I drew these images on the chalkboard and wrote their English names alongside.  Pandemonium filled the room each time I erased the images to replace them with new ones, but kids need to understand time allowances.  One student helped me in this endeavor, as he kept track of the ten-minute intervals on his watch and shouted the countdown at the front of the class as the other students raced to finish their drawings and yelled at him.  The exercise went well, and the students’ pages were filled with Halloween drawings. 

Then, two periods later after a long break, the art teacher was absent.  The teachers were once again on strike today and the students asked me if they could play futbol outside.  I almost relented and let them play until one girl came up to me and asked:

“Are we going to have art class today?”

“Do you want to?” I responded.

“Yes.”

“Then lets go inside.”

One student made me realize the importance of holding my ground, of committing to the act of teaching.  So I brought a class full of mopey faces inside, when all they wanted to do was play.  The class was so noisy that I cut them a deal; if they work for 25 minutes we could play Seven-Up at the end of class.  I started explaining the project: draw a three-panel comic strip using the Halloween characters from before.  Turns out, after the 25 minutes were up the students wanted to continue working on their comic strips.  A few kids rebelled- we had made a deal, after all- but I told them to look around at all the other students working.  When the bell rang the students had produced some amazing work.

Then, some students came running back into the room to tell me there was a disruption on the stairway.  One of the students in my class had fallen down and was in tears.  Time to maintain order, stay with the student, make him feel better, and seek help.

Once the day was done, I asked myself, “Did I really just do all that?” 

Yep, just another school day.