Lesson One – The Number Ten

It’s really cold here…I mean bitterly cold. For the past two or three days this week I have had to wake up to a very frigid 10 degrees or low…and I’m not happy about it at all. It has completely ruined all of my cross country practices and my own running schedule as well. At this point I’m heavily considering going into hiding for the next 6 weeks until winter is pretty much over…anyone with me?

Lesson Two – TOMORROW

To piggy back on the previous lesson, earlier this week we encountered some winter weather here in Northwest Arkansas. We had about two days of snow that produced icy road conditions that put many of the schools in this area out of business for a day or so. Of course once the snow started to arrive students became very gitty with excitement about the possibility of not having to go to school. Since there wasn’t a ton of snow there was a little bit of uncertainty as to whether or not we would be in school on those two days, so students in the Fayetteville district decided that state their arguments for not attending school on these snow days by posting on the districts Facebook page…this is where the train wreck begins.

It was entertaining to watch all the comments flood the district Facebook as they complained about how they didn’t want to attend school TOMAROW…that’s right, I said tomarow. As I watched students leave their comments, I realized that as a district we are not very good spellers of the word “TOMORROW”. So many people misspelled this very common word to the point that it became very painful to watch. After watching this unfold for a couple of hours it became very clear that we as a district needed to attend school as much as possible, if for no other reason but to learn how to correctly spell the word TOMORROW. Come on Fayetteville!

Lesson Three – MLK Day

We will not be in school on Monday as our district will observe the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday. Although we don’t need the break, since we have been out of school the past three Mondays, it will still be a great chance for everyone, regardless of race, to remember a man that meant so much to this country.

Lesson Four – If It’s Not Working…Don’t Do It

Cody and Evan speaking about the County Quest project that was laid to rest today.

One of the first things I learned about teaching was that if an assignment is not working, then don’t waste time by trying to make it work. This week I assigned my students to a project that required them to research various counties within the state of Arkansas, after they were finished with the research of their counties the idea was to create a travel brochure to that promote the area that they studied…they weren’t buying it. I struggled with this activity for two days as I tried to convince my students and myself that this was a great activity, but the bottom line is that it wasn’t working on any level. So today I decided to abandon the activity and just move forward. While it may seem unreasonable to abruptly end an activity, I feel like there are other lessons that would be more valuable to learn. So we move on, not focusing on the past but rather what’s ahead of us.

Mr. McClung