Legal Dramatic Play

"Objection" "I rest my case" I was amazed how much law lingo the students already had in their schema.

One of my student's father is the local magistrate. We were reading about patent attorneys & inventors, so we went down the local court house to settle a "patent civil case"

Two students played patent attorneys. Two played inventors claiming the invention. Two were witnesses. One was the judge and one was the court clerk.  They were given a general outline for the court case and they each prepared statements and ad-libbed questions. "Are you lying?" One attorney even prepared video evidence which was shown as "Exhibit A" 

The witness being sworn in by the clerk. The students were curious what happens if someone does lie in court. We were told that was called "Purjury" and that you can get in trouble by it. 

They also asked some great questions "Is it hard to make a decision?" "Are people sometimes sad?" 

It was an awesome real world experience. 

Life Below Zero

We hit -25 on Sunday. The cold is biting. When you open the door to the outside, you get lots of steam where the warm and cold air hit. My lunch froze when I put it down for a second on the way to the bus. Icicles formed on the inside of the windows.

Strangely with the wood stove and furnace, our main problem is being too warm. We wake up dehydrated and are constantly drinking cups of water.

It is also beautiful. There is no wind. In the early morning, the snow twinkles on the ground like little diamonds and as stated before: every sunrise and sunset is gorgeous. We are only getting about 6 hours of sunlight. By 9am, its starting to sunrise and 3pm, its sunset. This means as the students are getting ready to go home, it is gorgeous.

You do start to get cabin fever though. We had a birthday party for James this week and Thanksgiving is next week. Good to have some variety to the routine. We will be happy to visit Washington for Christmas Break.

It really makes you wonder how the Alaska Natives survived this back in the day. Would be so interesting to examine the history and cultural artifacts that were used!

Public Vs. Private Education

I realized today that I dont understand teaching in a Public School setting because I didn't get the American Public School experience. I grew up attending mostly private schools and international schools. I have no real frame of reference for what the classroom is "supposed to look like", that's why I'm so easily swayed by alternative methods.

My baby turned 1 yesterday. My toddler will be 3 and will be able to attend Headstart next year, so this realization really hit home:

1) I had privilege. I never understood that till right now. The people I interacted with, the experiences that I had is not what the average person has. I had teachers who were flexible, I wasn't just part of a huddled mass: I had a voice, I had an identity. I was held to high standards with a dress code & strict codes of conduct. Even now comparing how I speak, write, and spell compared to my husband astounds me.

2) What do I want for my kids? I am now terrified at the prospect of sending my kids to Public School.  My husband went to public school and we have different world views, which I value. I am idealistic and forward thinking, but he is grounded in a bit more cynicism and reality. I see things how they should be and he sees them how they are... and that's a terrifying realization of how our country has become divided.

How can I ensure that my kids get this diverse worldview that I have? Is there a way to transform public education to become more like private education?

Do you do it from the ground up? Leading as a teacher in a classroom...
Do you do it from the top down? As a Superintendent or Principal implementing policies across multiple classrooms...
Do you have to change the law? Write to the legislators to implement the needed changes...
Do you have to change the curriculum? Write & research as a professor at a University...

As this first semester of second year teaching at public school ends, I find myself with a lot of big questions..

Dash & Dot

My DonorChoose Project got funded and so our Dash & Dot coding robots arrived in the classroom. The students were SO excited. It was like Christmas. 

We encountered a small problem. Our ipads could not connect to the robots via bluetooth to be able to code them :( But our tech guy said that the ipads in the second grade classroom could! He would switch them out later this week. We have the xylophone (so they can create music) and the lego, bulldozer, and tray accessories. I can't wait to keep you posted on what creative things the students will do with them! 

Thankful...

We read some Thanksgiving poems this week. We wrote an example together on the smartboard and then I gave the students dry erase markers to draft their poem on their desk before writing it out on paper. 

The Second Grade teacher suggested the dry erase markers. The students are more willing to do drafts with the markers. (We have also used them to drafting stories and doing math problems.)  

I LOVE this poem & illustration. I love to read and I love the fishing analogy. 

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The 6th Grade class did a Thanksgiving play, so they invited us to go to it. 

They did a great job. So great to come together as a K-6. :) 

Connecting Class with Kahoot

We finished reading Pax for the global read aloud. We did a Kahoot Quiz between three classes. 

We also had some survey questions to figure out which of the characters was our favorite and how we felt about the ending! There were 36 students total participating between 3 classes. A little girl in the Illinois class ended up with the highest score. 

We had been tweeting once a week for the last month with these two classes (in Illinois and Florida), so this was a fun way to end the end. The class in Florida is reading Flora & Ulysses too, so we will likely re-connect with them again later in the year. 

I gave my students access to make their own Kahoot this week, so they have been working hard making their own quizzes. I have been really impressed. The best way to learn is to teach, right? :) I have been writing word problems like this to help the students understand HOW to understand what the question is asking. Seeing the student's Kahoot made me realize how successful this actually was. 

We have had some great connections with other classes. Here is our map board with the 4 letters we have received. We are doing the Holiday Card Exchange, so we should have more in the near future! 

Open-ended projects are just the best! This week, we participated in the #marshmallowchallenge. The students were given 10 sticks of spaghetti, 1 yard of tape, 1 yard of yarn, and one marshmallow. They were supposed to make a free-standing tower with a marshmallow on top. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/16PHez0zQJl0FKUHyQJvQu8TXeMpAGnF-4iBofRqVBds/edit)

It was interesting. We had just studied Native Americans who live in the plains, so there was plenty of references of how to make it stand like a "teepee" 

Most concentrated on getting the "tallest," but one group wanted it to "be able to stand up" first. We mysteryskyped with another class in Michigan who shared their towers. 

Afterwards, I put out more spaghetti, tape, and string so the students could attempt a second tower. They learned from their errors on the first tower. It really is incredible the difference between the 1st towers and the second towers.  

And by Friday.... They had really gotten complicated! 

#marshmallowchallenge

3rd Graders thoughts on the Electoral College

We compared the election results to our class election. We talked about how it was important that rules were stated at the beginning and that if you wanted to change the rules, you would have to do it afterwards. Clinton may have gotten more votes, but Trump "stacked more states" (An ipad game the students really like) We can't change that rule for this election (They tried to color all the red states blue) but if we think the rule needs to be changed, we can try to get it for the next election. 

I had asked if they wanted it to just be a 3rd grade vote or a 2nd grade vote. They agreed to let the 2nd graders vote too. T won the election with 13 votes to J's 12. I proposed the question if J had actually gotten more 3rd Grade votes, should she have won the election instead? J thought so because it was "just for 3rd Grade President not President of 3rd and 2nd Grade" and said "we should have a recount" 

My students decided that they should let the whole school vote (The 4/5th Graders had also done an election for Kid President of their class. They opened up voting to the entire community and had all 14 students run.) and then each candidate would get to "stack the grades" and the candidate who stacked more of the grades should win. Why? The felt it was "more better the more people who were voting" 

K, who ran one of the polling stations revealed that she was too busy working and that she had forgotten to vote, but it wouldn't have made a difference because her vote would have gone to T.  We chatted about how a lot of people didn't want to vote because they didn't like either person. "Well its not fair because we can't even vote for real, so if you can you should" 

I'm pretty confident 12 years from now in 2028, they will all be voting :) 

ELECTION DAY 3rd Grade Dramatic Play

 I think more people would vote if they grew up "playing" this way. 

We held a primary where 8/9 students decided to run for class president. We divided them up into 2 parties (Red) and (Blue). The students then wrote a speech detailing what rules they would make up if they were elected president or what projects we should do. "10 burpees for getting lost in the woods, writing a story a week, and exercise (Soccer once a week)" "If you get lost, you would have to skip count to 100 and lose centers for half an hour"  "I would be a good president good helper" "You would have to practice read live and do 5 basketball shots. If you have something wrong in the text book, you have to practice hard spelling words. If you be mean, you have to sit in the corner."

Our rules were you had to: vote for one person from the red team, one person from the blue team and could not vote for yourself.

I was impressed. Each student got at least one vote. The boys race was pretty tight with 5 votes to 4 for their nominee. The girls was spread out, with the winning candidate with 3 votes and 2 with 2. Two people only wrote one candidate instead of two.  I was surprised because I voted too and I was surprised at some of the kids who had gotten a large number of votes.

I made a slide showing candidate slogans and the students made up posters for both nominees. The red team had a great slogan "I will make you proud" The blue team had a slightly negative poster. So I talked to them about why you would want to run a positive campaign.

As the candidates wrote their final speeches, one of the twins brought up that maybe we should be different parties: "like one thinks that everyone should have the same rules and one thinks that we should have different rules"  Another of the twins brought up "I think that here and Germany have different rules and so we should have different rules. If someone from Germany came here to learn Gwichin, it would be hard for them"

The rules for the general election was: I was going to vote, everyone could choose to vote or not, and candidates were allowed to vote for themselves.

We talked about why voting was important and just because you are a boy, you dont have to vote for the blue team. We also talked about endorsements which means that you tell who you are going to vote for. We talked about canvasing and talking to each other to convince people to join your team.

"I'm not voting till he tells me" One of the girl twins declared meaning she was going to listen to the issues before making a decision and blindly voting for her sister on the red team.

In the Makerspace: they created campaign videos on puppet pals "I am Jane and I approve this message"(https://vimeo.com/190778391), used cardboard and cloth to make a polling station, created ballots, and even had a place to "register" to vote. Dramatic Play at its finest. One student became a handler trying to keep the candidate on task (they were trying to do something on the ipad rather than working on the campaign "You are being lazy and it makes me not want to vote for you anymore"), another became a reporter to ask them policy questions "What rules would you make?" Another became a "speech writer" and wrote speech for the candidate (The candidate upon reading their speech: "I dont want to say that, it sounds creepy and weird") They also worried about a rigged election "Maybe people should write their names on their ballots so we know that they didn't vote twice" Another student pulled up his hood and was the "secret service" ("You cannot bother President Travis right now" They made earpieces out of straws)

Secret Service Agent

Second Graders Line up to Vote

Polling station

Second Graders listen to speeches and town hall style questions

Next time I do this, I want to have a caucus... That would be fun!

Climate Change in the Arctic

We had a "Brown Halloween" this year. The last time there was no snow on the ground was back in 1938. Most people would not find this significant, but this really shows how climate change affects the people who live in this region. 

I have to say Climate Change wasn't really on my "radar." I'd heard all the political buzz words, but I think like most people I didn't understand that it is now and not in some distant future. Already there is flora and fauna in this region that wasn't here 20 years ago because it is now warmer and these species are starting to migrate North. The landscape is literally changing and in places like Shishmaref (which I'm learning about through school) Their sandy little island, which was held together by permafrost is literally getting washed away. This village lifestyle is being threatened and these people are about to become refugees in some of Alaska's big cities which are so different than these communities. That's what the big deal is... 

When people preach "Fur is murder", they have not spent time in the Arctic. Hunting & trapping is important for food, using in artwork for warmth (I just bought a pair of beaver mittens because the goretex gloves I had did not keep my fingers warm), and in communities where there are not jobs, a $150 or $300 hide brings in income. 

I have been blessed that the Culture teacher here is teaching me how to do beadwork that the Athabascans are reknown for. Learning to bead has been so great, it gave me appreciation for the beadwork that I see for sale in the stores. I made so many mistakes in my first two attempts and I keep learning the more that I attempt to do it. It really shows how you have to keep trying. Its enjoyable. I'd forgotten what it is like to have a hobby: to do something just for pleasure. 

I am seeing how important this year in the Arctic is for shaping who I am. There are a lot of important lessons that I will take from here.