9:19 a.m. - 2005-07-21
the power of illusion
I updated the social justice blog. Please check it out! Clicky-clicky.
Teaching kids can be like holding a mirror up to your face in bright sunlight (Frightening! Who knew that zit was so big? And those bags in the under-eye area! Ack!) Interacting with kids, particularly in a role of perceived power can be very insightful. For example, I have realized that when I call on students who have had their hand up for a while, insteade of just calling on them, I say "Destiny (or Kayla or Qwantel or Reenia) what were you gonna say?" It's just habit...never would have noticed it. However...I did notice on tuesday several kids, when I called on them, instead of just answering or asking a question or starting with "ummmmmm" like some of them do, they began with "Well, I was going to say...." Oh no...I'm teaching them verbal pauses!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!
You know what I mean...like when people unneccessarily add something out of habit to subconciously give themselves a second to gather their thoughts or to add unneccesary empahsis or to illict feedback...Like Ed Bock always says "Quite frankly" and Matt Cooke says "Does that make sense?" and I always say "soooo" and "you know what I mean?" I am going ot be personally responsible for the creation of a fleet of children who begin every sentence with "Well, I was going to say..."
In other classroom news, when I was teaching the children the other day, I was doing a unit on NASA with the 4th graders. 4th grade is secretly my favorite class. Not sure if it's the age, the laid back but effective teacher or the mix of kids, but that class is always the most fun.
Generally when I teach on a particular topic, before class, I go to the magical Internet, do various image searches and copy them onto a word document and then print out a page containing several pictures of whatever we're talking about...in this case, shuttle lift-offs and astronauts in their space suits and such. This one fairly talkative boy raised his hand after I passed out the photocopied pages. I called on him and he asked seriously "So, when do you like go to these places and take pictures for us?"
I had to hold back from laughing so hard. Please bear in mind previous units have included pictures of the following things:
Baby cheetahs at the Washington Zoo, African cheetahs out in the African plains and places horribly flooded and damaged by hurricanes, sattelite photos of hurricanes, The Tour De France.
It would have been awesome if he had never asked that question and that's what they all thought the whole time....picturing me out in the bush with my camera, sneaking up on cheetahs that have just caught a delicious wildebeast.
Oh, the wonderful and deceitful things I could do with Photo Shop to these kids....
I explained to him that I went on the Internet and found the pictures. 4th graders know about the Internet, right? Granted these kids are low-income and probably don't all have computers....but they have computers at school....right? He smiled and shook his head and looked up and me and says "You are amazing."
Kevin and Marc and Kelly and I are going to King's Island this weekend. We leave tomorrow and Kevin and I will be stopping in Athens around noon. If you so choose and if you are so able, do pop into Donkey or Casa which are the only places I plan on visiting.
