This Is Why I Do Teach

I meant to post this last night, but the election results got in the way (sorry, occupational hazard).

Today was a great day!! I had great conversations with my honors students in the morning about the first party system and the election tonight. But that wasn't why this was a great day.

That happened in my last two classes of the day, and both in classes where I am doing layered curriculum. In my first experience, I watched as one of my students walked another through the process of making a VoiceThread recording of George Washington. He was able to walk him through the whole process from finding an image to record over to posting the link at our class website. When I thanked him doing it and made him my official class tech, he simply said, "Well, you showed me how to do it." While that is true, I wouldn't have thought that the one time I showed him to do it would be enough, especially as it took me a couple of times to get it right. It was a great teaching moment.

The second one started during class and continued after school. One of my students has been hesitant to do much work during the process. Apparently, during lunch one of his classmates convinced him to do something with regard to the layered curriculum and that she would help him through it. As she told me this when she came after school to earn more points for herself, I was thrilled that she had so grabbed hold of the process that she was willing to work to convince others to do it. (Side note, she finished earning her "C Level" points Monday after school and has already handed in one of the "B Level" assignments, because she didn't want to wait until the last minute to hand things in.)

Some days it is great to be a teacher!!