Haiku for the Blue Planet Student Mosaic Part 1

So, in the previous blog post I shared a mosaic that my students put together for Earth 2010. This year, we were already working on haikus which are traditionally written about nature to for our unit of poetry. (Happy Poetry Month!) I had my students decide what they wanted the picture to be, draw it, cut it up and each student wrote his/her haiku on a piece of the planet.

We started first by drafting our poems:

Then we checked over them to make sure they followed the correct format:

Then we wrote our haikus on our little pieces of the planet:

Next we put them all together to create our mosaic:

I added a little extra credit assignment that my students were really excited about. We went outside and took pictures of nature with our camera phones and then I had the students post their pictures to Instagram and put their haiku as the caption. We used a hashtag them so I could find them and give them credit. They liked that they could share their assignment on a social media site they often use:

Are Our Students Allowed to Flex Their Decision Making Muscles?

"Simply put, we have fallen in love with the illusory certainty of making a choice, and abandoned any shared commitment to investing in the long and careful deliberative process that is necessary to ensure that the decisions we do make are both well informed and thoughtfully constructed."

These sentiments came from: the Education Week article In Modern School Reform is it We the People or Me the Individual?

I agree whole-heartedly, I just haven't articulated it the way they have. As a middle school teacher, this is what you lose when you create "zero-tolerance" policies. This is what you lose when you evaluate instruction with selected response assessments. There's no wiggle room, no second chances, no mercy and no grace. We are teaching our children that making "good" decisions is a natural innate ability. We give little room for growth to reflect that one's ability to make the right decision comes more easily over time and maturity, or that decision making is more like a muscle and only gets better with exercising. When an adolescent makes a mistake now-a-days, they are severely punished ...imagine how this discourages their faith in their ability to make good choices throughout life? 

I know that is not the central thesis of this of this article, but I couldn't help but pull it out. It is definitely a problem in our schools. 

Time is a major factor. So much as to get done in a certain amount of time, and we simply ignore the differences in time it takes different individuals to process information. 

How can teachers and parents help students flex their decision making muscles?

How do you feel about "zero-tolerance"? 

In what ways can we teach children to enjoy the process instead of focusing solely on the product?

Fates Shackled to a Scantron

A hush comes over the entire building as the students sit in their janitorial rows. Harsh fluorescent lights cast an ominous glow of fear and nervousness over their quiet, innocent faces. The room looks like a prison cell since the brightly colored posters that once made the room look more cozy, were snatched down and now the children are bound to their desks. No there are no smiles, no happy sounds of children’s laugher—only solemn faces fixed with anxiety as if they have met their fates. And all I can do is look on. I have the urge to reach out and comfort them, but I’m not permitted to. Our fates are actually tied together on this day—a year’s work thrust upon them in one hour as they take the state standardized test.

Sir Ken Robinson: Changing the Education Paradigms

In English

In Spanish

What Does School Really Teach Children?

What can we do to change this senario? At home, at school and in the community? What is your role in educating the children in your community? What are some more unintended lessons children are learning in school?