The first sentence written in my noteback seems apt: "Teaching is about relationships, not subject matter." Albiet, knowing the subject matter doesn't hurt.
Last Friday was my first day at Allan Composite School. The K to 12 facility offered me a variety of classroom perspectives. I assisted exceptional students, sat in on a English 20 class and took part in the excitement of a Grade 1 classroom.
The hands-on experience with the exceptional students, however, was the highlight of my day.
The first exceptional student that I assisted was learning about the arms races of the twentieth century. As we sat down together to look through the notes his teacher had prepared with him, he looked at me and said, "man, this stuff is so boring." In the space of fifteen seconds, the student was pulling his i-pod and cellphone from his pockets, seemlessly switching from one device to the other.
Try as I might, and even when he had put his phone and i-pod away, maintaining his attention was a difficult task.
Noticing that reading was not one of his favorite activities, I used copies of two maps to highlight the hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Not unlike the computer screen from the 1983 movie War Games, lines were drawn from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. symbolizing rocket strikes. I found that the activity really peaked his interest in a subject he found really unbearable beforehand."They really have rockets that could go that far?" and "Why would they build so many nuclear weapons?" were among the questions he sought answers to. While he still had problems maintaining his concentration, I noticed that when I implemented more hands-on activities he generated more interest in the content he was to study.
I helped another student with his reading. The teacher I was working with had made a series of flashcards for the student to read before they dived into a book on whales. Several times the student and the teacher went back and forth with the flashcards, as to allow the student to grow familiarity with words he had difficulty with. We went through the flashcards, read the book on whales and helped him make a chart that outlined its major points. I made sure to compliment the student when he made certain achievements, like pronouncing a word correctly in the book that he had a hard time recognizing on the flashcards.
All of this happened on a day where teachers and students wore pajamas, collected and ate egg mcmuffins before class and completed a bus emergency drill. Although I stuck out like a sore thumb in my shirt and tie, I certainly felt the sense of community and belonging that made Allan Composite School a joy to attend.
