Hafta oniki (Week 13)

Compared to last week Friday I could have one of the worst weeks ever and it still wouldn’t be as bad as that day. Fortunately for me the kids were amazing this week.

            Monday we were still off so when we started back on Tuesday I expected they would be off the wall. I started them off on their morning work and they were dead quiet and working hard. I gave them spelling words, handwriting, we did math and language arts. Then for the first time since ISAT prep we actually did some social studies and science. I love teaching math but it was so nice to be able to pull back the reigns and do some other types of work. The funniest part was at the end of the day when we were going over their homework. I didn’t give them any during ISAT week, they didn’t get a whole lot during the week after, then last week over spring break the only thing they had to do was write a rough draft of their social studies project. It seemed like they forgot that they had to do homework when they were in school. It was only a 10 second “you’re in school, you get homework” and that was it.

            Wednesday was a blur. Again the kids were extremely well behaved and we got through a lot of material. We did math in the morning, we started some social studies before gym, did a math minute during bathroom break and corrected their math homework before lunch. Then we finished social studies before music, after that we read the main story of their language arts unit, we did some writing, and then finished with science. It was probably the most productive day I’ve had all semester and it was fantastic.

            Thursday was just another normal day. The biggest thing we’ve been dealing with over the last few weeks is a few students have problems with unstructured times and their interactions with other students. For instance in gym when they aren’t working independently or pre-planned groups, they have time to practice or play the learned content with each other there are a lot of instances with picking on one another. The issue is that they come to us about it and we have no idea what happened because it wasn’t in our classroom. Whether it’s art, music, or gym they come to us (which is understandable, it’s not as if I’m upset about it) and ask us to mediate or help and we have no idea what happened. We’ve told them that if it happens in a certain class it has to stay in that class. There was a minor incident with a couple kids saying something to a third student just to bug him. They came to me and it was just a mess of “he said this” but only because “he said that” and “they were doing this” and we couldn’t get to a complete story so I just told them to stay as far away from each other as possible and that if I have to talk to them again about it they will get referrals and we didn’t have another problem with it the rest of the day.

            Friday was a day we got next to nothing done. I gave their spelling test in the morning and then was doing some fraction review with them and that took much longer than expected. They had gym and a bathroom break then kept working on their math review. Then they went to lunch and afterwards we played jeopardy review of everything they learned this week. Then they went to library and straight to a recital for their concert coming up that went to the end of the day.

Classroom Confidential

              In chapter 10 Schmidt talks about social justice. Social justice is the belief that every child has the right to be educated which I agree with 100%.  In today’s world you have to prepare students for what’s ahead, what the world is like. One of the best things I think was said in this chapter was “school must be about more than worksheets and recess. It needs to be about their world and their lives.” Schmidt talked about a class who learned about the child slaves working the cocoa fields on the Ivory Coast. Kids who would work 12 hour days, underpaid (if paid at all), and malnourished all so people could get their chocolate fix. They ended up writing the president of M&M/Mars and saying they won’t eat any chocolate but fair trade chocolate and sent back all their Halloween candy. On top of learning about all the social justice topics you can, what this does is also teaches other important skills like application of knowledge to real life problems, a lot of critical thinking on how to resolve the issues, realistic ideas about the world, and since social justice applies much closer to home than most people think it gives students awareness of community needs.

            As a Christian educator, teaching about social justice is something that is extremely important. I believe not only as a person we need to teach what is going on in the world, but as a Christian we need to teach and do what we can to make a difference. We are all missionaries and we have to teach our students to be the same, so teaching them about the important issues and what they can do to change them is equally as important as doing mission work yourself. For instance, the class that sent letters to the president of M&M, as third graders that didn’t take a lot of effort or any money other than postage, but they were making a difference to the cruel treatment of God’s children, that’s the important part. Social justice is something that we absolutely need to teach our kids in today’s world and is more important as Christians because we are on this Earth to protect God’s creation and be missionaries.