Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

It's the week before break, and I'm exhausted. This is my post for the week. Mindfulness thought for the week: Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can. --John Wesley

I would say quiet is the best way that I would describe the week. I don't really feel like I can say that very often. All of my lessons went pretty much as planned, and tomorrow is already Friday, so I'm going to mark this one down as a win. Of course, now that I've put this into words, there is a chance that tomorrow will end up completely cattywampus (I'm knocking on wood at this very moment). In science, the students have been learning about the atmosphere this week. The unit we are in focuses on how Earth's systems (the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere) interact with each other. On Monday, we learned how the geosphere and hydrosphere interact in order to create wind in the atmosphere through the uneven heating of the surface. On Tuesday, the students learned about the different layers of the atmosphere by sorting informational tiles based on a resource they could use. We then used those informational tiles to develop models of the atmosphere o...

I wish for simpler times. I wish that my 5th grade students (and all students, really) could simply have the same 5th grade experiences that I had. It was just a completely different time, even though, to me, it just doesn't seem like that long ago. What I would call a "normal" childhood when I was in 5th grade would probably be considered a rarity now in many places. But that is just not the way that things are now. I think that the amount of mental health education that we do now, which is obviously incredibly important, seemed non-existent when I was in 5th grade. These are the times we live in. 20 years ago I was a senior in high school, and it was 20 years ago that the Columbine shootings happened. These shootings were, by my recollection, the first time that an example of school violence held the nation's attention. It just seemed so far away, though, like it couldn't happen around here. I don't know for sure, as I was still pretty much a kid at that ti...