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| A student climbs a tree on Earth Day |
Today was Earth Day! A joyous reason for me to act like a hippie and for that to be socially acceptable, and so I took full advantage of the situation. Oh, and it is nearing the end of National Poetry Month, and it is Hump Day and the kids have been working hard, so what better reason to celebrate?
I teach high school, three periods a day of English. English is one of those classes that every one has to take (and pass) four years in a row in order to graduate. I feel that it is my duty to make my classes as applicable to my students' lives as possible, to help them, through reading and writing, learn to think and communicate. I also feel that the nature of my class gives me the leeway to get to know my students in ways that other teachers may not be able to--after all, through our writing and sharing as we connect to literature, we learn a lot about one another.
And so yesterday, I realized that my students and I both needed a break. We have been working hard since spring break, attacking Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Catch-22 as we work furiously to catch up from the two weeks of school we missed due to snow last nine weeks.
Earth Day dawned, and I rewarded my first period, a year long English I/reading class with a break from routine. We passed in our reading of Romeo and Juliet, and instead we read about recycled houses, learned some active reading skills (highlighting), practiced answering comprehension questions using the key-word method, and made our very own recycled collages and Earth Day found poems.
In this class, it is always a challenge to get students engaged and keep them motivated, especially since I work in a one-to-one laptop school. While the availability of technology is phenomenal, students are too easily distracted by the ready availability of, well, the whole world virtually at their fingertips: Facebook, Google, youtube, you name it, they do it instead of their work. Another downside to the technology that we use on a daily basis is that students get burned out--they forget the joy of learning and it becomes about the click click click of fingers on a keyboard, faces dimly lit by screens, and tension headaches from staring at a laptop for too long.
Today, however, EVERY SINGLE student participated the entire time. Students were eagerly going through magazines looking for specific pictures, calling out in joy when they found what they wanted and sharing pictures with other students. They each produced a unique collage made from recycled materials, and more importantly, each of them smiled and reconnected to the joy of learning.
My AP class is a different class altogether from my first period. These students are the smartest in both schools (I teach at a redesigned school which has a school-within-a-school). They are the movers and shakers, the volunteers and student athletes and scholarship winners. They push themselves very hard, beyond their breaking points, and they carry this tension on their faces. They normally seem so stressed out, so tired.
In 4th period, we went outside and enjoyed our Earth. Students were tasked with writing an Earth Day reflection, and many of them surprised me by writing this reflection in a poetic format because it is also National Poetry Month. They then had the remainder of class to continue reading Catch-22 while sitting outside in the sun.
In this class, students broke up into small groups. Some walked on the nature trail. Some walked to the football field or baseball field or track. Some went to visit the baby chickens and the bunnies. And everywhere I looked, I saw something I haven't seen in a while--students smiling, students relaxed, students happy to be here.
We took today to enjoy Earth, to celebrate this beautiful land and air and sun and water we so often take for granted, to be rejuvenated, and to reflect on how we can better take care of our Earth all the days of the year.
My conclusion: EARTH Therapy works! Try it!
My Earth Day poem is available here for your enjoyment.