Lesson One – The Return
For the first time in three weeks, Lessons Learned has awoke from it’s winter slumber. Due to the large amounts of snow we have received in the month of February, we have only been at school 3 days in previous two weeks. Finally we have received some great this week with temperatures in the 60’s all week and more to come. Hopefully we have put all the snow behind us and we can finally get back into a normal routine.
Lesson Two – A Little Bit of Hope
Way back in January my students worked on their city projects using Glogster. For this project they had to research a selected city from Arkansas and research various pieces of information about their city. For resources students mainly used internet sites and their book…expect for one student. Sarah from my 2nd period, who selected the city of Hope, decided to go straight to the source and email city officials from this city. Within 2 days she received about 5 emails that including all of her requested information. Here is a small portion of the last email she received:
c. Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO) currenly employs 1600 construction workers at the power plant site in western Hempstead County. That number is expected to rise to 1900 workers later this spring.
For my readers this information may not mean much, but what the official that emailed her has done is give her the exact answers to the research questions. All she had to do was put it into her presentation. Lesson to learn here is, don’t waste your time by complaining of a lack of information on the internet, go out and find it for yourself…and someone that has your information.
Lesson Three – The Lunch Crew
What originally started out as Middle Eastern Friday, has now morphed into an almost daily lunch crowd that shows up at my door. A few weeks back my two favorite Persian students had the idea that we should dedicate Friday’s to eating Middle Eastern food. So I started making humus and they started bringing food that their mothers made and Middle Eastern Fridays were in full effect. However, word about this spread very quickly and more and more students started showing up at my room for lunch just about everyday. So we decided to turn this into an opportunity for us to get together and have lunch together. All it consists of is my and a bunch of my students just sitting around eating and sharing stories…and we have a blast every time we get together. To me the best part of this whole lunch crew that visits my room is that it gives me and the kids a chance to build stronger relationships outside of class time.
Mr. McClung