Overachievers

My kids all wrote a ton this weekend - I was really excited. Apparently, I had underestimated their abilities. One of my kids had a full page, front and back written out about the brain lobes and their uses in football, another wrote very intelligently about the causes, symptoms and treatments for schizophrenia. I was truly amazed, and very proud!

Today has gone well - no real commitments except my letters to my kids.

We're in the midst of sun shower - it's bright and sunny and rain drops are fallin' on my head...

Monday's Lesson Plan

Because the last time I posted a sample lesson plan, I actually had to print it from this Blog because I forgot to email it to myself the night before. I have successfully emailed it, but here's another example of a lesson plan, but it's apportioning class time to work on our newspaper project.

Holly Metter / Neuroscience

Date: Week 6 / Day 1 / July 23
Subject: Class time to work on project

Lesson Objectives:
By the end of class, students will:

-complete a rough draft of full article and
brainstorm an idea for a picture

-choose a title for the class newspaper

Lesson Procedure:

Do Now: Match the following:

1. Parietal a. personality, social skills, planning, memory

2. Temporal b. spatial reasoning

3. Occipital c. sound and speech

4. Frontal d. connects right and left hemisphere

5. Cerebellum e. breathing, heart rate and connects to spinal cord

6. Brainstem f. vision

7. Corpus callosum g. coordination, walking, posture

Select Newspaper title (5 minutes)

We will brainstorm a list (Daily Dendrite, Brain Bulletin, The Brainiac)

We will vote, majority rules

Review Expectations (5 mins)

I will review with the class what I expect from their assignment:

* 4-5 paragraph essay

* Clever title for article

* an image

Student Work Time (30 mins)

* Students will spend the remainder of the time working on their essays.

* By the end of the class, I will personally check in with each student to answer any questions about their assignment or their work so far. I hope to proofread the work so far.

* By the end of class, each student will have a rough draft of their essay (4 to 5 paragraphs) and a title selected for it.

Homework: Complete rough draft and revise it – spellcheck it. Find image to include. If possible, type essay. Bring revised draft to class Tuesday.

Possible problems:

1. If students only have a soft copy of their document, I will send them to the library with a note asking a Teacher to please print and send the kid back to class

2. If students do not have sufficient information or an adequate outline, I will work with them to develop a better structure. I have given most students outside resources that are appropriate.

3. If necessary, I will pull a kid out of ALA Monday to continue working on this project.

Barbeque at the Beach... in the Rain!

It's been a slow and lazy weekend, and somewhat productive. I've done about 3 hours of work for a club at school, talked to Travis a lot, slept a lot, read a lot (HP #6), and even called all my kids to check in about their assignments this weekend and written personalized letters to several of my kids. On the last day of class, I'm going to give them each a letter and some photos of the class and the brain dissection too.

This afternoon, the Admins all hosted a BBQ at the beach at Key Biscayne today, but sadly it poured all day. We made do and enjoyed our food anyway. Burgers and hot dogs and soda and cookies... all courtesy of our Exec Director. Yum. Oh, and by car it's only 15 minutes away, in contrast to the hour and half by bus. Oh well.. it's always a fun trip. A bunch of folks played beach volleyball and several of us got in the water. It was placid and pleasant, despite the continuous drizzle.

We're back now, and dried off. Here are some photos to tell the tale. Gotta love free food and crazy companions and awesome alliterations!

Feast and Talent Show

We feasted feverishly on Friday - we don't get homecooked food often, but yesterday we had a plethora of food! The culmination of Culture Week was a pot-luck feast with various families donating dishes. In the afternoon, we prepared for and enjoyed the Talent Show. The students were impressively well-behaved. Photos below will tell the story.

A Sampling of the Delicious Foods...














Yum. The gallo pinto (brownish rice) above is courtesy of Amy, one of my Villagers (pictured below with a gray shirt)




















Students enjoying their tasty food (for once! the cafeteria food, which is catered, not cooked on site, is startlingly awful.)















Several of my crazy Villagers - in various states attentiveness. They can be a wild group - especially the monster in the pink polo.















Miss Holly, with the "shin-biters" waiting for the House to open before the Show.















Students in the Theater, awaiting the Show. They behaved so well! We are treating them all to ice cream on Monday!

Comments

I really like comments - yes, it makes me feel special. I've changed the settings so you should be able to post a comment even without a GOOGLE membership or log-in. :-)

What Teachers Make

Maybe I've been brainwashed, but I really love this program. The mission and execution are unbelievable - the growth and joy we see in the kids in remarkable, and the job is intense.

Here is one of the motivational poems that we've seen a lot. Written in 1999 by a NYC teacher and poet.

What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don't work out, you can always go to law school

By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

He says the problem with teachers is, "What's a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"
He reminds the other dinner guests that it's true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it's also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we're eating, after all, and this is polite company.

"I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor," he says.
"Be honest. What do you make?"

And I wish he hadn't done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won't I let you get a drink of water?
Because you're not thirsty, you're bored, that's why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven't called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, "Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don't you?"
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?

Weekends are the end of the week

In college, the weekend didn't feel entirely UNLIKE the week - I did not have classes on Friday last semester, so Thursday night flowed into the weekend, but I still had papers, meetings, and all that jazz to do. Yet, with a regular 9-5 job (albeit that mine is 7:30 to 6), Friday dismissal is so much sweeter. Sure, I have lessons to plan and letters to write to my kids, but in general I can relax and not think about Breakthrough all weekend. And heck, grading papers at the pool just isn't that bad!

Class went really well yesterday and today - I've changed two main things since I received the course evaluations from my kids. I plan less material per class so I can take more questions and pursue more student-generated tangents and I've done a group activity/competition every day. It slows down the pace -- and there is so much I want to tell them about the brain -- but, the kids love the competition or races or activities. It's the essence of "bridgey" -- our buzz word this summer which encompasses all things decorative, exciting, unconventional, and activity-based.

Today we enjoyed the Talent Show - today's big event as well as Culture Week which has been on-going this week. We enjoyed a fantastic, Thanksgiving-like pot luck at lunch today, where students brought in food from their heritage country. We have kids who are either directly from or who's family heritage traces to about 15 Latino/Caribbean nations (about 30-50% Cuban and 35% Haitian, which a smattering from Honduras, Nicuragua, and Argentina) so we had a good mix of foreign and American food. At lunch today, I enjoyed: baked macaroni and cheese, gallo pinto, latkes, banana pudding, and brownies. Oh, and oooodles of mangoes! Did I mention the sliced and diced mangoes? One of the teachers conveniently has a mango tree in her back yard (!!!) and brought us Dormers about 30 mangoes and hand cut about 20 for the lunch today. I was in heaven with all that food -- mangoes and rice and beans pretty much make the whole week better! (Chocolate pecan pie and maduros could have helped a bit...but I'm not complaining!)

Photos to come in my next post. Off for a run - the sun is setting and it's so beautiful to see the palms highlighted against the sky like a performer on stage.

Adieu!