How to survive a day in a middle school metal shop:
Plug yer ears and put your angry eyes on.
Seriously
though, Mr. Grumpypants the teacher isn't good for anyone. Glad I work
with people that understand that! Wore these glasses in one class, and
one of my students looked at me for about a minute with a goofy look on
his face, and finally said, "Mr. T, I just can't take you serious with
that look on your face."
Been a rough week, but lots of
fun. The trimester ends next week, so of course everything associated
with that - grades, finals, new rosters, new units, new classes to
teach, end of tri activities, etc.- is driving teachers and students
buggy. Throw into the mix 3 days worth of subs for my classes while I
attended a PLC conference in SLC. Ironic, eh?
The
conference was GREAT. I (we) learned so much stuff our heads hurt, but
we came away with a ton of great ideas, and wishing that everyone in our
school could have been there to see the big picture of what could be
possible. For those of you who don't know- PLC is an education acronym
for "Professional Learning Communities" (sorry Dad, it doesn't mean
programmable logic controller...). Rick Dufour has written several
books on the subject, as has his wife Becky and the rest of the folks
who presented at this conference.
Pretty hard to
condense 3 days worth of excellent presentations, but I think if you
could simplify it all down to a main idea it would be something along
the lines of: Working together with other teachers as a TEAM is better
for all involved- teachers and students, and you will get more done with
less work and get better results.
If only it were that
simple! Too often (and I'm super guilty of this) I think teachers
prefer to do their own thing in their own room- or teach in isolation as
the Dufours put it. They have this whole idea of "Loose and Tight",
where there are strict and rigid guidelines put in place, but the
teacher is left to determine the HOW. This mean the teacher can still
practice their "art" while STILL working as a team towards a common
goal.
I came away with a much better understanding of a
lot of basic principles of education- both on the WHY and the HOW.
Formative assessments, summative assessments, guaranteed curriculum,
essential elements, when you see why it needs to be done and the
knowledge / data that can come out of it, you see why it's so important.
The
best part of all of this?! It's LESS work for the teacher, and the
students get MORE one on one time if it's needed. The downside, of
course, is that it only works if everyone is willing to do it.
I
could go on but I've had all of this stuff bouncing around in my head
for the last 4 days and I'd really like to change gears to something a
little more... mechanical? Time to unplug and enjoy the weekend, but
here's a start for y'all:
This
was on top of a post near the convention center. It had maybe a 4 foot
wingspan, the props spun in the wind, and it acted like a wind vane.
Would LOVE to build something like this, and I don't think it would be
too super hard. I'll add it to my list of stuff to do, right after
surviving a school year, finishing Dan's chariot, building a sidecar for
one of my bikes, figuring out what to do with the old Dodge's, and on,
and on, and ....
You can find more info on the Dufours and PLC's at
allthingsplc.info or
http://www.solution-tree.com/
Classes finish up tomorrow (we spend every class all day long giving the shop a deep clean) and the new tri starts Monday. Will be starting right of the bat with Tech 2 on the printer, so in a few more weeks I should have some more cool projects to post. I'm impressed with what these kids come up with, as you'll see when I get all of these cars done!
Almost tempted to go pay the higher prices at Fastenal. *sigh*
