Look out, Leonidas.... we've conquered ancient Greece!

Wheewww. Finally a moment to breathe and reflect on the awesome job our students did conquering ancient Greece. From the moment we divided the kids into teams and told them their topics, they embarked on a conquest that led to their showing off their work on Tuesday, December 20th, in the cafeteria at the ancient Greece EXPO. Each of our houses set up exhibits filled with everything from baklava to shot puts to parthenons and proceeded to tell all comers everything they knew about their topic. (And sometimes the topics of others in their house!) I was a little surprised, but very pleased by the number of people who came in support of the students' academics. Even some people from Grafton who were there for the basketball game came in and looked around. When Mr. Shaffer introduced himself, they asked him if the kids were AP students doing this exhibit! Wow! The kids really exceeded anything we could've imagined when we first envisioned "It's All Greek to Me."

Are You a 21st Century Teacher?

This was a blog post by Lisa from SimpleK12.  In it she details 21 activities a 21st Century teacher might do with her students.  Here are the first five:

1. You require your students to use a variety of sources for their research projects...and they cite blogs, podcasts, and interviews they've conducted via Skype.
2. Your students work on collaborative projects...with students in Australia.
3. You give weekly class updates to parents...via your blog.
4. Your students participate in class...by tweeting their questions and comments.
5. You ask your students to study and create reports on a controversial topic...and you grade their video submissions.

Check out the article to see the other 16!

World Religions

Kristin and I have been teaching a World Religions PBL. Yesterday we had our students do exit visas where they wrote a question about Christianity on a Post-it and they had to stick it on the door before they could leave.

We had a guest speaker, Reverend White, in our classroom today. The students learned about myths and other aspects of the Christian relgion.

The Mylan Collaboration Room

Students using the Mylan Collaboration Room for group projects:

Counselors in the Freshmen Classrooms

The counselors recently visited Kristin and April's classroom.

Collaboration: It's not that easy

I think some people believe that collaboration comes easy for Kristin and I when, in fact, it definitely has its challenges. Take this picture for example. This weekend we attended the NCSS Convention in Washington, D. C. where we stayed in a hotel together. This photograph represents us well. If you know us, you can automatically pick out which bed is mine and which is hers. We struggle with being complete opposites all the time.

My bed is on the left. No clutter, no mess. This may be a result of the self-diagnosed claustrophobia or maybe it's just how I am. Regardless, I am more structured. I like to have a plan.....for everything. If things don't go as planned, it's alright; however, I like to have a back-up. I like to consider myself an organized and tidy person, sometimes to the point of annoyance. Just today I was re-wrapping all of our laptop chargers....this is probably a twice a week occurrence.

Kristin is more laid back and unstructured. For her, having a general outline is comfortable for her. And because she is a great speaker to the kids, she is able to loop around information to make a great point without having the details of a lesson plan 100% laid out for her prior to her deliverance. You can imagine how this may strike up some anxiety when we teach together. Here is an example of the method of her madness....

This is her explanation of the term advocate using Cyrus the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It was a beautiful mess. I was so amazed at her delivery of the message that I took this picture specifically for this blog. Our students were nodding their heads while she was talking and demonstrating the definition of one vocab term. I knew at this point that we could coincide with each other and I was able to let go of my structure a little.

So maybe opposites attract, but it sure is difficult when you have different teaching styles. Collaboration has a lot to do with compromise. We give and take everyday, but the most important thing is that we both have the same goal for our students - we want all of them to succeed. I believe it is our professionalism that gets us through the day.