Journal #8
March 22, 2007
Today had an air of mayhem that was very different from past weeks. Normally the 10th graders are fairly calm and quiet, and fairly compliant with every activity we do. Today, however, they were restless and slightly uncooperative at first. I think this is because they have had standardized testing all week and thus they saw today as a free day. I explained to them that our last two days teaching in this residency would be Monday and Tuesday, and that on Monday would be the culminating task. I assigned six students to work on their set design projects and the rest were supposed to develop their recipe monologues. They really did not take to this well and reluctantly started to work on them. Brandon suggested that they turn the monologues into dialogues and involve more students in the scenes. I agreed that they could do this if they wanted to, because it was actually combining all of the things we had been working on up to this point. I regret not making more clear standards at the beginning of the activity then, because it became quite informal. I should have reviewed the scriptwriting lesson and some other terms before letting them create their scenes. The groups were already formulated and it was easy for the students to decide whose recipes to adapt. It was difficult to be facilitating both the students who were acting and the students who were drawing at the same time, but I am really impressed with the way the day finished off. Students got organized and put together interesting scenes, and those who created set designs did a fantastic job and were on task the entire time. Even Reyna, who usually does not want to participate in anything, drew a beautiful church for her set design that she was working on with Anahi. Floyd, who was working on his rap of how to make Carrot Cake, started to say that he didn’t want to perform. It took all three teachers there to convince him to keep working on it, and we made a deal that he could do it on video instead of live in front of everyone. His writing is so creative that I didn’t want to waste it by him not feeling comfortable performing. I am really looking forward to the culminating task day on Monday when we can watch both periods perform their scenes and describe their set designs. I’m sad that our residency is ending but I’ve already started to think about what I want to do next quarter and I am going to be discussing this with Kori soon.
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