Sometimes It Works Better than You Realize

For Black History Month this year, we’re watching biography videos each day. My students have a booklet that I’ve put together with a name, picture, life dates, and notable achievements listed for each day of the month.

Aside from picking interesting people to learn about, almost all of the effort is placed onto my kids. Each morning, we take about 15 minutes out to watch a video, while kids are regularly asking me to pause the video. They are taking copious notes with very little direction, they are asking deep and amazing questions. They are so engaged, I think both out of inspiration taken from people who chose to live bravely, and out of a sense of outrage at the unfairness that these heroes faced. The passion that my kids have had for learning these stories has been so exciting for me to watch. Kids who normally groan when I tell them they’ll need to write are running up to show me each day how they filled their pages with notes. My teaching partner told me how one of our most struggling students said to her, “I am really loving Social Studies lately!” This engagement is just blowing me away and filling my heart, and like I said, I give very little direction. They’re deciding what’s important to them, and they’re getting it down. They’re remembering things.

And then I saw this on Facebook tonight. I’m good, this has me for the weekend:

I love it!