a kindergartner is better than me at basketball.

yup. true statement. one of the kindergartners kicked my tushy at basketball during recess this week. the kid is half my height, one quarter my age, but makes baskets like a pro. not fair!

he also invited me over to his house. that was adorable.

anyway, what a busy week. there was a mix of wonderful moments, stressful moments, tension-filled moments, and sad moments...

MONDAY
a planning day as usual. fairly uneventful.

TUESDAY
we arrived early as usual. last week i felt like we weren't organized the whole week, so i decided to finish the small bits of planning we had to do and print out all of our lesson plans for the week. my overachieving self is starting to make a comeback. we then headed to 6th grade. we discussed more about transportation and looked at transportation systems. we gave them all transportation logs to keep track of their use of transportation over the week. that should be interesting to look at.

then we had a break...i can't remember what we did...

next came our lesson with 4th grade. we continued learning about the rain gauge and had them form groups to start making a guidebook on how to use the rain gauge. the making of the guidebook will be interesting...i still don't know if i have a clear vision on what it's going to end up looking like (or whether we'll be able to complete it in our time left at the school).

after lunch, we enjoyed the craziness that is 1st grade art class. they painted self portraits that had sculpted out of clay a while back. then they proceeded to use WAY too much construction paper to make little cutout hearts. i swear...if the amount of hearts that class cuts out in one class period is an indicator of how much love they have for eachother...there is a LOT of love going on...

our 5th grade class brought episode 2 of who wants to be a meteorologist? again, a solid lesson. at the end there was some confusion over the greenhouse effect and global warming (kids were asking if greenhouses were really bad), so we'll have to clear that up next week...

after school, i helped with the drama club. that never ceases to be crazy.

oh january...

this week flew by...

MONDAY

we were supposed to participate in some MLK day volunteer activities, but a snow storm on sunday night through monday morning prevented us from going. we did spend some time talking about the significance of the day, but spent the rest of the day lesson planning.

TUESDAY

we have the older students (grades 4-6) on tuesdays. our first class is 6th grade. we finished a bit of our discussion defining global issues and then set off to talk about sustainability and finding solutions to global issues. we used the recent earthquake in haiti to illustrate the iceberg model of global issues...that often a catastrophic event is just the tip of the iceberg and that many complex, interrelated issues lurk beneath the surface. good lesson all in all! our education manager came to observe us and saw the tail of that lesson as well as our lesson with 4th grade. we had them do an interactive water cycle game using dice to determine where they go in the water cycle next. it was a lot of fun! we then had the students chart out how often they visited certain sites (clouds, ground water, the ocean, etc) on a bar graph (integrating science and math with interactive games!!!). it was lunchtime...and then art class with 1st grade. they are adorable...then we headed to 5th grade for a review of simple machines. caleb let a big version of "captain's coming" but instead of ship-themed actions...they all had simple machine actions (screw, lever, wheel and axle). they really enjoyed the game! at the end we had some extra time so we played the jedi mind trick...they loved it!

caleb started his after school chess program and i helped out with the drama club. hooray!

finding a routine again

MONDAY

caleb and i spent the day planning, but i was super tired after going to see city and colour in somerville, ma the night before. it was worth the tiredness, but we didn't accomplish much through the day.

TUESDAY

we were at school early. i was still super tired and actually drank coffee. we attended a staff meeting in the morning and were able to discuss potential service learning projects, including the rainfall program option. the staff seemed interested in what we were doing and very supportive of whatever project worked out best. then we went to 6th grade and taught a lesson on understanding global issues. it was awesome! we reviewed concepts from the previous class then looked at this quote:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." -John Muir

afterward, we discussed the definition of global issues, brainstormed global issues, and then had the students make an issue web with a ball of yarn to show how global issues (poverty, the environment, the economy, etc) are interconnected.

next, we headed to pre-k! yaaayy! they. are. adorable. we ate snack with them and talked about fun things like birds and butterflies and coffee. then we talked with marge (one of the language arts specialists) about helping with some reading groups : ) that should be a lot of fun.

our next stop was 4th grade. i just love them...the lesson was AAWWEESOME! we had fun with drawing water cycle diagrams. it was interesting to see how the students represented the water cycle in different ways. one made it into a math problem (ice+sun=liquid water; liquid water+cold=ice), some drew pictures of what would happen is the sun stayed constant on a glass of ice, and some wrote out a paragraph describing their version of the water cycle. caleb then led them in a good discussion and guided imagery taking them through various parts of the water cycle. the students actually started moving like the water and even formed a snow crystal with their hands! we didn't tell them that they could react in that way, but it was great to see the students so engaged. on the way back to their desks, one student farted really loud. some of the kids started laughing (i did, too), so we had to have an entire gigglefest in the middle of the lesson. i loved it. to wrap things up, caleb and i had the class make a 4th grade water cycle. we started with a glass of ice, a dog ate an ice cube...which by various means ended up in the ground water, came up as a spring through the parking lot, ran off into the storm drain (yay stormwater!), into the river, then the ocean, evaporated into the clouds (then we ran out of time) and ended up raining back into an ice cube tray. it was hilarious!

tuesday was a half day, so after lunch, we got out early.

back from winter break...

...and it has definitely been a busy week. 

MONDAY

monday found us lesson planning for some events on friday (even though i would end up snowshoeing and clearing trails all day at some land trust properties) and lesson planning for the week. caleb and i seemed to zoom through everything and even made prototypes for our water molecule hats (to be explained later).

TUESDAY

on tuesday morning, we had fun scraping a thick layer of ice off the van before we even left the forest. getting down the driveway was also quite interesting...once we got to school, caleb and i ran around getting some last minute tasks done. we taught a lesson in 6th grade on ethical reasoning with environmental issues. we first asked them what they knew about global environmental issues and what they wanted to know (KWL assessment: know, want to know, and fill in what they learned after the lesson or unit). at first, they seemed unsure of what they wanted to learn much about environmental issues. after the KWL, we split the class into groups to discuss environmental dilemmas. the groups worked very well! since the class enjoys talking in general, organized discussion was perfect. after the students discussed their dilemmas for about 20 minutes, we brought the class back together to debrief and see what they gained from the discussion. from the responses, the students displayed a growing curiosity about the complexity of environmental issues. one student even asked, "does this problem really happen?". others appeared rather shocked that finding solutions to these dilemmas can be complicated and nuanced. caleb and i are very excited for our next lesson with them!!

we then helped with 1st grade with reading...they have so much energy...

our 4th grade lesson on properties of water went so well! the students are curious about water and seemed to be fully engaged in learning about properties of matter and the amazing qualities of water. they loved making water molecule hats and even wore them to lunch!

during 1st grade art class, i got hit by the tired bus...and the kids were rowdy. one didn't want to cut out his coyote at all...i tried to use some of the responsive classroom language with him, but it didn't work.

afterward, we headed to 5th grade. half of the kids left for choir soon after our name game, but the small class was great. we played lots of games (paperclip game, seismologist, mechanic's coming). they had played most of the games in some form or another before, but they seemed to love our versions!!

third week at hawlemont and guest appearance at berkshire trails elementary

i'm writing this quite a few days after my last week at hawlemont. despite wintry weather reports and many, many canceled flights coming from the east coast over the weekend, my travels back to michigan for winter break were rather uneventful. i'm incredibly thankful!

TUESDAY

i began my day with the morning meeting with 1st grade. the class has been learning the 12 days of christmas to perform at an all school meeting (a responsive classroom method) on thursday. they have all of these cute actions to go along with the different days...it was quite adorable. after their singing adventures, i helped with a spelling pretest. the students can sound things out when they are trying to spell the words. my favorite words were ones that started with 'm' because having 15 "mmmmms" circulating around the room was quite adorable. those 1st graders sure are smart with spelling! once they finished the pretests, they broke out into reading rotations. i got to sit on the rug and listen to the students as they had free reading time. i learned all about emily's babysitter and how the family dog ran away and was found again.

after 1st grade, i met back up with caleb and went to 4th grade for an introduction lesson. for as much time as we've spent in that classroom, we haven't had a chance to really get to introducing ourselves. the lesson went superbly well! it might have to do with the fact that we've already done quite a few introduction lessons...and it also might have to do with the fact that the 4th graders are just fantastic students! very well behaved, attentive, and curious. after some basic introductions, we played a few games (they LOVED them) and then had an introductory discussion on water. it was great : )

caleb and i joined the 3rd and 4th graders for lunch. the 4th graders saved me a spot at one of their tables and by the end of lunch i had gained a pop star name (rockin' robin) and have a secret handshake with them! (some version of a flapping wing and a peace sign; i'm pretty excited).

the post-lunch hour found caleb and i helping with the 1st grade art class. going along with ther 12 days of christmas, they drew pictures to go along with the 12 days that they would use during their performance. it was fun, as most art classes are : ) i sat with one students who had the 3 french hens...this student also loves plow trucks, so he drew a plow truck with 3 hen beaks sticking out of the top. clever way to avoid the actual assignment. i must say it was a pretty good drawing of a plow truck...

caleb and i were slightly pooped after the busy day, so we spent the afternoon building this interactive water cycle game we'll use for lessons after break.

second week at hawlemont!

holy moly...it's already friday! where did the week go?

MONDAY

monday found caleb and i planning for our introduction lessons in 2nd grade and 6th grade.

TUESDAY

we were up bright and early for the caravan to school. caleb and i snuck into a morning staff meeting. it was good to see how the staff work together and discuss issues in a respectful manner. the rest of morning had us in 1st grade for the morning meeting, then off exploring some other nooks and crannies of the school.

our first adventure was to the basement which we discovered is a labyrinth of school supplies...some of them were quite ancient! the prize find was 3 huge boxes of yarn! hawlemont is collecting hats, scarves and gloves for needy family, so i made plans to raid the stash before the week's end to make some hats : ) we also explored the "science closet", which we found out is an amazing cranny in the school! any sort of tool for basic experimentation can be found in there. it might be one of my favorite spots in the school (with the exception of the art room and the library). i spent about an hour sifting through all of the fun items in the science closet...pulling out a stack of materials for potential lesson plans. so exciting!

next, we ventured to the lunchroom to catch lunch with the the 5th and 6th graders. we haven't worked much with either grade, but it was nice to meet them and learn more about their interests. after eating leftover lasagna from monday night's dinner, caleb and i headed to the art room to help the 1st graders attach their rainbow fish to a painted ocean of their creation. for as crazy as those 1st graders are, it wasn't too hectic! only one partial emotional meltdown and lots of cute ocean scenes by the end of class. i do think, however, that the kids had more fun mixing the paint thank actually painting. precious.

when our first full day at school was done, i walked around the pond back on site as thoughts of a snow day on wednesday danced around my head. the weather predictions had us expecting 4-8 inches of snow tuesday night-wednesday with a changeover to freezing rain on wednesday morning.

first week at hawlemont school...

i have been living and working in a rural western massachusetts town for almost 2 months now. boy has it been busy! i have had so much training and so many small projects...all while trying to get acquainted to a new home, new people, and new responsibilities. i keep a journal with my day-to-day reflections, but i thought it would be nice to have a place to collect my thoughts about teaching environmental education to elementary students ranging from kindergartners tripping all over themselves to sixth graders starting to gain their independence.

i am teaching at hawlemont regional school where students from the towns of hawley and charlemont gather together to learn in a very safe and supportive atmosphere. the school uses the responsive classroom technique, which i am trying to learn and incorporate into my personal teaching style. i'll write more about it as i learn!

my teaching partner, caleb, was a drama major in school, so i'm excited to see him tell stories with the kids and share his love for creative expression. he admits that he needs to spend some time getting used to interacting with kids, so it will be fun to watch him grow.

this week we spent three half-days observing the classrooms looking for various aspects: management styles, child behavior, and the non-human aspects of the classroom to name a few. i ended the week with lots of scattered notes and the start of a teaching schedule. our contact at the school, a 1st grade teacher, is really excited for us to be there and is enthusiastic about getting us actively participating at the school.

it was a lot to take in. every morning felt a lot longer than it actually was. after our half-days at the school, we still had more education training to finish. i enjoyed this afternoon's training since our contact came in to talk a bit more about the responsive classroom method. it was good to see her in a teaching capacity with folks older than 5 or 6 : )

from my observations this week, i think it should be a great teaching experience. definitely a time for learning. planning lessons, communication, teaching effectively and working with a teaching partner that i may or may not have much in common with are just the start of my learning objectives.

...to the start of a great adventure!