First Day(s) of School

One of my unwritten goals for this year is to make a post every week. The idea that I want to pursue for the TED Ed Club is to help others see the awesome that is around them every day. The truth is I have awesome students and we do awesome things in the classroom so I want to share that with everyone.

This was the first week of school. My oldest son entered 2nd grade and every year he comes back and tells us he doesn't remember anything he did that day. When he entered Kindergarten, I remember him saying that the entire first day was him listening to his teachers tell the class the rules: where to sit, where to stand, when to talk. As he spoke all I heard was 'Sit. Stand. Speak. Good boy.' This year I vowed not to make class an obedience lesson.

The first day of school is a clean slate. I can be anyone I want. I can be the person I was last year or I can completely recreate myself. I chose the latter.

On the first day, I told my students that I didn't want to talk about procedures or grading or a syllabus. I talked about learning and my expectations for them and their expectations for me. I talked about my experience at the Google Teacher Academy and how it changed my life. I did a lot of talking, unfortunately, but they did a lot of smiling.

My classes are very different from each other. I think my Honors classes surprised me the most. I talk about my bungee chairs and how I encourage the class to make the classroom their learning space, to be as comfortable as possible. One of classes just stared at the chairs as if I told them they could sit on a bed of nails all class. My other class stopped me, asked if I was serious, and the second we broke for the activity, began pushing each other out of the way to get to the chairs. One student didn't make it so he sat on top of his group's desks, happy as a clam.

Colleagues came up to me on Friday and told me how their former students who have me told them how excited they were for my class. That makes me feel good, that they actually heard what I was trying to tell them. But on the 2nd day of class I wanted to be sure. I ran a PollEverywhere poll and asked "What was your biggest takeaway from last class?" Obviously each kid took something slightly different away, but here is a screenshot of my favorite:

I wasn't going for fun, but many realize that they will learn chemistry, they will learn new skills, and that they actually have to work. The ball is rolling and now I just need to keep this momentum going.

I think I did something right

So, it happened again.  Actually it happened twice.

I gave my students time to work on their post-lab questions during class.  One of the questions was "Prior to its discovery on Earth, how did scientists know Helium existed in the sun?"  Some students asked me questions trying to discover the answer and gave them the guidance to come up with it on their own.  But there was one group of students all looking around one person's paper and they hadn't asked me a single question.  I wandered over to find them intently reading something on one student's phone.  It turns out the reason they weren't asking me any questions was because they simply googled the discovery of Helium.  The article described the entire method of using a spectroscope to break down the light from the sun which is exactly what we were doing in class.

During the next period, my next class was presenting their Animoto videos for the element project.  I always like to give a small award to the video voted best by the class.  So, I passed out little strips of paper and had everyone write down their vote.  As I am collecting the votes, one student says "Mr. S, why didn't you just have us text our vote to polleverywhere?"  I had them use their phones earlier in the month, but it never occurred to me to use them for this.

Today made something abundantly clear to me:  give them the right tools and get out of their way.