A Spirited Wednesday

For those of you that aren't Seattlites or transplants to Emerald City, you may not know that today was the Seahawks Super Bowl parade through downtown Seattle.  Much to the disappointment of many teachers, administrators and students, school was not canceled.... and because everyone in their right mind who could go obviously went, I couldn't get a sub :( As you can imagine I was a little sad and bummed out.  You can also imagine what a classroom on a day like today would look like.  Fortunately for many of my students, a lot of parents took them out of school to go to the parade, which I think is awesome and wholeheartedly support.  So I had on average 10 kids a class, which certainly cut down on the potential shenanigans that were a real possibility if all 30+ students per class had shown up.

How can you not love the LOB?!  Anyway.... back to the whole classroom thing...

So what do you do on a day like this? Obviously I don't want kids to miss out on learning, and since 2/3 of my students were absent, introducing new material seemed like a bad idea.... So we did some goal setting/ reflecting and talked about the impact of the Seattle winning the Super Bowl on the state of Washington. I mean I do teach Washington state history after all.... It was awesome and I think my kids learned more about the economic, social and business impacts a major event like the Super Bowl has on a city and state... Can I do small group seminar class all the time?! It was fricken AWESOME! Obviously it's not possible or sustainable when I teach 150 kids a day to do as often as I would like, but I WILL find a way to make it happen some way or another! 

And now on to creating the perfect seating chart, I'm trying out Love, Teach's method, and so far I really like it, makes me really stop and think about each kid and specific child groupings, see her post on how she does it here! By the way, if you don't already read her blog, you should, it is hysterically and brutally honest which I love and makes me feel sane that I'm not the only one :)

Until next time,

Karissa

P.S. The fabulous reflection/goal worksheet I used with my kids was page 5 from this awesome & creative online journal, from Grace is Overrated found here!