If You Close Your Eyes...

....you'll miss it. You'll miss the whole point of it all.

Today was so much fun for me - If only Dr. Dean could see me now. :D We started our genre exploration unit where our essential question poses a much larger idea than I had anticipated when I first chose it: "How do we learn?"

(Sidenote: White board discussions are gold. They are like golden gold. I wrote the question "How do we learn?" on the board. When the students saw it, they were engaged from that second on. The students see they get to do a white board discussion and they start jumping out of their seats. I secretly think they are celebrating because it gets them out of their journals, but the joke's on them. They are still writing and brainstorming ideas. Honestly, I think they love the social collaboration. They can watch their friend go up to the board and write, and they can respond to it. I had one student respond from his chair, "I don't even get what that answer means!" so I told him to go up there and write that! It triggered this whole onslaught of ideas. It was great! Thanks to Heather Wing for that idea!)

We looked at a poem from Poetry 190 (#007) and I reminded them about our analysis activity we started the first week of class (and they remembered it!!!!). We analyzed the poem to come up with "rules" for a poem and the students made guesses about purpose and audience. It was so great.

Then I showed them a NIKE advertisement. Hello middle school boys. So glad to see you came to school today. We analyzed the rules of an advertisement (an ad needs a logo, a slogan, a product, a brand, a celebrity to endorse the product or brand), and we talked about audience and purpose.

Then I showed them a poster for Red Ribbon Week.

Each item worked so well!

I had students so excited, it was contagious! And it was like everything we've ever learned came together! We were referencing strategies, we were talking about similarities between genres that we have read/written before, we were talking about it all!

Then, after class, I had a sweet student approach my desk and ask if she could read her poem out loud to me. I almost missed it. I almost missed it. I almost - looking at my pile of late/revised/missing work to grade - told her I didn't have time.

She read me her sweet poem about her longing for someone to be there for her, to love her, to care for her. And over the course of her poem, she realizes that she is the strongest person she knows. She is there for herself.

I almost missed it. I almost told her, "You're going to be late to your next class, so you'd better save that for later."

The best part? She read her poem to me and said, "I still have to fix it since I didn't use the rules for poetry we talked about today."

(she didn't organize her poem into stanzas. :D)

Now - I know you can't do it all the time. In the middle of my 4th period class I had a student (from an earlier period) open my door and ask to talk to me outside the door. I had to say, "I'm sorry. I can't right now. I'm teaching." She was at lunch and wanted to talk about her grade...

But those moments when you can pause your 100 mph to-do list are the moments that make the day the sweetest.

Other day sweeteners:

• Sara Bareilles (my prep is not the same without her right now)
• The 55" TV sitting against my wall  right now (though it may become less sweet if they decide to install it during my 6th or 7th period, which may be the case.)
• The grades in my gradebook (I looked at them for the last time, and though I have students failing, it looked right. The grades look like the matched the student and their performance in my class. Mmmm....feels good.)
• My bowl full of brownie points (I get to draw for prizes tomorrow!)
• The pile of revision work sitting next to my computer (which tells me that students DID learn something and are learning from their mistakes!)