Day 101: The Praxis of Pedagogy

Ok. Today was the first day of the new quarter. It was Wednesday classes. I'm team teaching Meta and Journalism with Jeremy. It didn't go badly. In meta we played an intro game where they had to take some amount of toilet paper. However much they wanted. We said nothing. Then, for however many squares they had, they had to come up with something nice about themselves. Next, we paired them up by counting out numbers and finding their matching numbers. They introduced themselves to each other and said the nice things about themselves to the person. After 5 minutes we had them get up and introduce each other and tell one thing about the other person. It was pretty cool working with Jeremy. Like Voltron, together we have better pedagogy. More directed thought and creativity is given to it. Anyways, next I read out the "What is Meta" sheet and gave out the homework.

Journalism actually went really well. I'm kind of excited about this class. The kids seemed to be into the journalism. Our first publish date is January 18, 2006. They decided on the name Teen Xpress. A zine written by teens for teens. Jeremy envision ourselves as consultants and facilitators while they will be producing the product. We have one student that is going to be our student editor. She will be doing the first round of correcting papers and enforcing deadlines. So sweet. We will be doing the final round.

I'm also having my CTM do community service. They want to feed the homeless in Oakland. We are doing a canned food drive and bake sales to donate to charity. 2 of my CTM that have the most hours took the lead on this one. I'm giving them hours off but they wanted to take the lead on this before I even mentioned hours off. Pretty cool.

I realized today that they are still kids and they want to have fun. And fuck I want to have fun too. I have this idea for a battle CTM. Kind of like the Iron Chef style thing. Our school is ridiculously dirty. We could have a CTM battle 4th period or Wednesday. Whoever's CTM can gather the most trash within a time frame gets a prize. I was thinking about VIP privileges. So VIP privileges would mean they could cut to the front of the line at lunch or something. Something. But I'll throw it out there and see anyone bites.