On Tuesday afternoons approximately half of the school leaves to go skiing. This is fairly common practice in New England, justified as physical education. They even try to make all sorts of ties to NH history, mathematics, and other curricula, in order to justify the fact that the school is allowing them to leave for 10 hours of instruction time over five weeks. (This is the same school that told me I could not take my students to see Sweet Honey in the Rock because the experience had no academic value). Essentially it's recreation for the families with resources (and a few of the under-resourced kids with advocates), while the rest stay at school. I actually do believe skiing is valuable, and I don't mind taking a load of school time to do it, but let's do it. Let's get everyone out there. Let's no separate the haves and have nots during school hours. And let's not leave behind a small group of kids and tell the teachers that we have to keep teaching... or else.
But here I am, with 12 kids left, for 2 hours every Tuesday afternoon. So my colleagues managed to convince my principal that we should have a visiting artist come in and teach beading to the remaining fifth graders. Um... the Native Americans beaded! And... uh... you have to count the beads. It involves math! She bought it, and today the artist came in with needles and thread and beads. We wrangled everyone down to the cafeteria, the whole motley crew, and got to work.
It was wonderful. I showed Andrew how to thread a needle (after he spent a good ten minutes trying to poke the eye through the thread). I watched as the most fidgety kid in my class meticulously threaded beads, silently, for fifteen minutes. The kids were flushed with the excitement of doing something with their hands and the frustration of learning a new skill. One student declared as I dismissed them, "I love Tuesdays!" It was a good time. Yes, they touched on history and counted, but mostly they had fun. Focused, skillful, thoughtful, fun. These are the moments that they will remember from school.
1 comment:
We had skiing at my elementary school, 6 Fridays a year, the WHOLE day (because you have to drive 2 hours from Seattle to get to snow). It was wonderful. I had a great time, I have great memories... and though it sucked that the less-resourced kids didn't get to go, I don't think the school pretended to be teaching those Fridays - they just did fun activities all day. Anyway, thanks for writing this blog, I read it every time you post and really like to hear about your kids and your thoughts on teaching them.
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