Leaf with Web. Radish Group, 02/05/13
Time has slipped away from me again as it sometimes does, and suddenly it is February- and getting towards the middle of it. I have been working non-stop (4 am to sleep) for the past few weeks, focused on classes mainly but also finishing up things- the portrait (which I didn't like, but did anyway. And framed it. And the *only* person who said 'Thank-you' was the librarian.....either it is much much worse than I thought or it was just passed over or something....but public 'Thank-yous' were given to those who organized the event and made the meatball appetizers. Ok, I may be petty- and the foods teacher is one of my friends who goes above and beyond and certainly deserved an award for all of the time spent on catering all of our school events- but......gee whiz.) The HOSA flag is done, prom is underway.... and I just don't know where the time goes. I don't slack off, not at all, but am always trying to ketchup. Today is my ketchup day- I am staying home from work to work, to hopefully get all the details of stuff squared so that I won't have to be quite so frantic all the time. Thing is, I cut back on one thing- dropping the museum- and other things rise to take its place. An extra section of classes to teach. Workshops on the 12th (going to) and 18th (facilitating- while being audited by the Friday Group, which has to do with Race To The Top and the Federal government..... they will be in attendance observing the Fine Arts transition to the new curriculum.... no pressure there, just a major part of federal funding evaluations for our county......). And I was called to the office the other day- good thing/bad thing- I had been named as one of four instructional leads for our school. What that entails is working across departments to vet and align curriculum, and training all the other teachers in instructional design. All of things that I love, and I'm teamed with the Science teacher Croson (which is awesome as I will explain in a bit), and they swore up-down-and-sideways that it would not take time out of school, but of course it will. In the meantime we train others on Tuesdays during our Titan hour, and meet as a pod group on Fridays. There are also representatives from Exceptional Children (to cover modifications for those populations) and Guidance (data. testing. ranks.)- so total a team of 6. Exciting, but exhausting...already spread thin.
But it is for the good of the kids, and it does work- as evidenced above. Last summer I wrote a grant- 'Square Earth'- that had to do with combining art and science to document our local area, increase environmental awareness, and as a part of Project NOAH, which I participate in. We purchased the cameras and supplies, but Croson and I did not have a chance to work together at all first semester. This semester we have appropriate aligned classes, and combined two of them to begin the project. My class was taught the basics of digital photography, her class the basics of environmental structure. We combined them into groups and sent them out with cameras and scavenger hunt lists (and us!). The groups are named after the cameras (which I name- because it is easier to remember 'Radish' than 'The pink nikon #x'. We have Radish, Rose, Eclipse, Shadow, Crow, Snow, Salt, Phoenix). The kids loved it- they worked really hard to find things- and managed to find things that I couldn't, or didn't think were out and about yet. Crawfish, Lizards, flowers of all sorts.... I loved this to- field biology being one of my forever things- and combining tramping around with photography and good questions- excellent way to spend a morning. What I loved the most is that the kids were curious. *That* to me is the most valuable part of the class- getting them to be curious, ask 'what is that?' or 'how do I do this?' .....that gives me more hope for the future than any test score ever.
I am forever glad that I was encouraged to be curious, to ask why and to explore. That is why I keep teaching I think- to see how it will all turn out, and to share that curiosity, hoping to infect them with just a bit of it. And to do this well, sometimes I need to step back, like today, and just get things done and out of the way. Then I can continue on my quest.
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