Today was the last day with my summer school kids and I wanted to share something that happened today which made this whole summer worthwhile. If you remember I had an issue with a student (Raheem) 10 days ago when he wrote about his brother who had been killed last year. Well today, something similar happened in my classroom but to a much better conclusion. First, a little background:
On July 24, in Philadelphia, two teenage boys (ages 17 and 13) were killed in a drug deal gone bad. Read the entire story here. A few students in my class knew these boys. Today, I tried another writing assignment which I thought would be fun for my kids. I had them all write the first line of a story and then pass their paper to the boy who sits behind them who then added the next line to the story and then passed it along to the next student and on and on. I got lots of stories about how great basketball is. But here’s what five of my wonderful boys came up with [I’ve fixed their grammatical and spelling errors]:
“It has saddened many people to hear that two teenage boys were shot and killed in their house. These two teenage boys did nothing wrong to anyone to get shot in their own home. The teenagers’ death saddened hundreds. I was friends with both teenage boys and it was upsetting to hear that my friends died in my area. I knew Rohan from my cousin, we were real close and when I heard the news, it was devastating and I hope they find their killer. RIP Rohan & Chris.” (See the photo)
What was the most amazing thing about this story is that it was Raheem who started the story in the first place. The fact that all these boys, especially Raheem, felt safe enough and supportive enough to write this story in my class and allow me to read the story aloud to the entire class was probably the most moving and amazing moment of my summer. I managed to keep it together emotionally in front of my students but a couple hours later when I tried to tell this same story to my CMA group, I completely lost it and needed George, my amazing adviser, to read the story for me. It means so much to me that these boys trusted me and their fellow students enough to share this story. This piece of paper is going in my scrapbook!
This was the first day I felt like an educator! I also used the story to discuss themes and morals of stories and they unanimously came up with the moral of the story – Don’t have anything to do with drugs! Such bright boys! Unfortunately, I still had to put three of my students in detention for behavior issues. Oh well, no day is perfect.
Check back tomorrow morning for Summer Institute (Week 5) post.
On July 24, in Philadelphia, two teenage boys (ages 17 and 13) were killed in a drug deal gone bad. Read the entire story here. A few students in my class knew these boys. Today, I tried another writing assignment which I thought would be fun for my kids. I had them all write the first line of a story and then pass their paper to the boy who sits behind them who then added the next line to the story and then passed it along to the next student and on and on. I got lots of stories about how great basketball is. But here’s what five of my wonderful boys came up with [I’ve fixed their grammatical and spelling errors]:
“It has saddened many people to hear that two teenage boys were shot and killed in their house. These two teenage boys did nothing wrong to anyone to get shot in their own home. The teenagers’ death saddened hundreds. I was friends with both teenage boys and it was upsetting to hear that my friends died in my area. I knew Rohan from my cousin, we were real close and when I heard the news, it was devastating and I hope they find their killer. RIP Rohan & Chris.” (See the photo)
What was the most amazing thing about this story is that it was Raheem who started the story in the first place. The fact that all these boys, especially Raheem, felt safe enough and supportive enough to write this story in my class and allow me to read the story aloud to the entire class was probably the most moving and amazing moment of my summer. I managed to keep it together emotionally in front of my students but a couple hours later when I tried to tell this same story to my CMA group, I completely lost it and needed George, my amazing adviser, to read the story for me. It means so much to me that these boys trusted me and their fellow students enough to share this story. This piece of paper is going in my scrapbook!
This was the first day I felt like an educator! I also used the story to discuss themes and morals of stories and they unanimously came up with the moral of the story – Don’t have anything to do with drugs! Such bright boys! Unfortunately, I still had to put three of my students in detention for behavior issues. Oh well, no day is perfect.
Check back tomorrow morning for Summer Institute (Week 5) post.
2 comments:
Sorry that Blogger doesn't have a 'Like' or better yet a 'Outstanding' button.
I couldn't agree more, Alvin. Blogger, get with the times! :-)
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