My poor, poor little children....You work so hard every day. Why can't your mean old teacher leave you alone? Why must I push you to complete your assignments, try harder, and learn something every day??? Why can't I just let you be?
Here's the answer: I want you to be curious about the world. I want you to love learning -- and keep wanting to learn throughout your life, not just when you "have" to in school. If you leave me at the end of the year with just one memory, let it be that you have a love of learning; that you know what your strengths are and you are willing to shine...
Be a FIREWORK!!!
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne **NOTE: Add your post's URL to the COMMENTS section; comment on your writing group's posts; comment on 3 of the national posts (TwoWritingTeachers).
I can see you working, working, working. It's a wonderful thing to see, actually. You know that people around the county in leadership and political positions say that students aren't learning anything. They should come to WLHS today and see you!!! They would be oh-so impressed. You're talking about what to blog about; you're encouraging each other; you're trying to embed videos and pictures. Yes, some of you are goofing off (I'm looking at you, Time and Justin!), but mostly you're....showing your learning.
A teacher can't ask for more than that, can she?
Okay, well, here is a writing topic for you today if you're crazily wracking your brain for one:
If you and your best friend could have a free limo for 24 hours, where
would you go and what would you do?
or...
Happy blogging!!
“I’m not writing to make anyone’s children feel safe.”
—J. K. Rowling
“There have been great societies
that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
—Ursula K. LeGuin
**Remember to post your unique URL in the COMMENTS section.**
We are setting up our blogs this week, but all I'm getting is they are "doing this for a decent grade" -- what if I don't grade it? Can you be trusted to blog if no one is looking over your shoulders?
Well, I don't know. But guess what? That's what is going to happen. I'm not grading the blogs. I'll read them; I"ll comment on them; but you won't get a "blog" grade at the end of March. Why? Because I want you to LEARN!! I want your writing to get better. I want you to see your blog as YOUR IDEAS, not your grade. Grading is inaccurate and does not tell anyone what you learned. So what if you got an A in your English class last year? Did you read something amazing? Did your writing bring tears or laughter to someone else? If not, you didn't learn anything.
Yes, I'm turning your schooling on its head, and I don't care -- not even a little bit. Your job in high school is to learn -- not get a grade.The goal for this blogging experience is for you to connect with yourself -- your ideas, your thoughts, your fears. The reward for this blogging experience will be the comments you elicit from other students (my comments won't mean as much as your peers).
Think about how you can use your blog space to show your learning about a topic you're interested in. Can you video yourself learning to shoot the basketball in different parts of the floor and critique your form? How about publishing your own poetry and getting feedback from a person you don't know? Or imagining what it would be like to travel around the world -- what would you see?
Watch this video about skateboarding...then tell me in the comments what you're thinking.
