Celebrating a Little Late (But Celebrating, Nonetheless)

My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing your own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. 

 Reasons I'm late to the Celebration Link Up:

1. Stomach flu since Tuesday afternoon ( I didn't slice either). 

2. State Contest Week for speech

3. A rough day at contest

4. Tired

5. Grading

6. Procrastination

7. Couldn't find the celebrations

And then I started to think

And they were there

Those celebrations were hiding out, waiting for me to be ready to appreciate them.....

This week I wrote letters of recommendations for several of my senior speech kids. And this gave me a couple of things to celebrate. The first, kids who asked me back in the fall to write theirs.  So nice to write letters when there really is no deadline. And the second, well, first I have to be honest.

As many high school teachers will tell, I keep copies of all the letters I write. And every year, when a kid asks me to write a letter, I think about what former student they are most like. I use that letter as a template for the new one.  Of course, I add personal info about the student, personal connections, etc, but the form tends to be the same.  And with each letter I wrote, I began thinking about these students and our years together. Each and every one of them holds a special place in my heart. It was fun looking back at the growth they have had.

Friday, I wrote a letter for a student who is so unique, that there was no letter to fall back on. I had to start from scratch. And no letter will do her justice. I wanted to send video of her dancing with abandon during a "Don't Be Boring" Friday in Drama class. I wanted to send the brochure she wrote in Creative Writing about her ideal school. I wanted them to listen to her tell stories. And the whole time I wrote, I heard this song in my head:

As I said before, Saturday was a rough day at contest. I felt like I had failed the kids. It was hard for me to be positive when I got home, hard to find positives. But again, there were there

• singing boys on the bus ride down
• parents who drive down to see their kid perform for 5 or 10 minutes
• students supporting each other
• great attitudes
• The "let's move on to individual" attitude
• Seeing growth from one year to the next
• A student who will be a leader next year, although he doesn't know it now

So, you see, even when it seems like you had a crappy week and there was nothing to celebrate, there really is. You just have to peel away the crap and look.

Aloha!

Don't Be Boring...

I love my drama class.

Most of them are my "Speech kids"...those kids who work with me from November through March to go to contest.  But there are also about five who just took Drama because they needed an English credit. They are, however, very talented and fit right in with my kids.

The assignment I give the first day of school is called "Don't Be Boring".  Students can do anything they want in one to three minutes. They just can't be boring.  It's purpose is to get them to perform right away. There's nothing worse than waiting for days before you have to perform in front of the class, even if you know them well.

This class showed some talent--I had a student play the ukelele and sing a Jason Mraz song. One sang, another played her clarinet, several told stories.

And when we were done, they wanted to do it again.

They seemed to have a new found respect for the others in the class--especially those they didn't know well.

"I just learn so much about people with this," said one of my senior contest speech students.

So, we planned another one for last Friday.  A couple were gone, and we ran out of time for a couple of others, so we finished up on Monday.

Again, I was blown away by some of the talent in my classroom. This time we had an acting piece, someone played piano on computer and we went to the band room for a percussion piece. There were also two dance numbers and several oral interpretation pieces

When the last person performed today, the same contest speech senior said, "Why aren't these people out for speech?"

"Yea," said another. "These are better than most of the things we saw at districts. And they didn't have much practice time."

Why indeed.

There are several things I love about this. But the main one is that my very talented contest speech students recognize talent when they see it. And instead of viewing this talent as competition, they look at great additions to our team. And they encourage and recruit those people to join us.

And the next "Don't Be Boring" Day is scheduled for September 21.  I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Moonwalkers

It's been four years since I've taught a drama class. In four years, I forgot how much I enjoyed it.  I laugh every day at the craziness that comes out of high school students. For them, I think this class is like recess....

Anyway

We've been working on pantomimes in class.  Creating small stories without props. Today's assignment was a real person pantomime. We had moms driving cars, little kids watching TV and even Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. My favorite was a dead on pantomime of our principal when he walks into a classroom. Hysterical. Really. Everyone knew who she was doing.

Next, a student did Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.  And the following conversation brought tears to my eyes.

"Isn't it Armstrong? Isn't it Louis?"

"No. Louis was a jazz trumpet player. Neil was the astronaut."

"Yea. Yea. Neil. Didn't he just die or something?"

"Yes. He did."

"Oh. Now both moonwalkers are dead."

Confused looks on the faces of the rest of us....

wait for it....

"Yea. Neil Armstrong AND Michael Jackson."

Really. I can't make this stuff up.