posted November 16, 2007 11:03 AM
Ms. Valeran had it all planned out. The children would line up single file and march in orderly fashion to the AV room, where everyone would sit quietly while a presentation was displayed and explained on the overhead projector. "Single file everybody!", instructed Ms. Valeran, and the children obediently responded. Up to the point where the children march to the AV room, everything went fine. But when they got there, someone else had taken the room first. "I'm sure we made a reservation for this room at 1:30", explained a slightly frustrated Ms. Valeran. But the other teacher wouldn't give up the room. "Back to the classroom everybody", Ms. Valeran said, and the whole class, shoulders slumped, marched back down the hall to the classroom.
At first she was stumped. "Everyone take out your readers and study, please", she said, then turned to look at her handful of transparencies and hastily, but neatly scribbled presentation notes. So much effort! it would have all been so perfect, so instructional and so well organized! Ms. Valeran reached into her desk drawer for a tissue to wipe an extremely small tear of disappointment from her eye that had formed back at the AV room. It was in reaching for the tissue, that she saw something which inspired her. As the animation returned to her face, she sprang into action, tossing out instructions as though emptying a toy box.
"Class! Class! I want everyone to pair up with a partner. Jack, you come over here since you can't seem to keep your hands to yourself. I have a special job for you. Stacy, please turn off the lights. Ok I want each pair to pick someone to come up and take a transparency. As you get your transparencies, I want you to sit, single file, against the wall. Everyone got it? Ok come get your transparencies."
And with that, the entire class paired up, with each pair receiving a transparency. Jack, the odd numbered student, was handed the flashlight that Ms. Valeran had found in the drawer, and Stacy cut the light.
As Ms. Valeran went through the presentation, at each point where a transparency was to be changed, a new pair of students would walk to the center of the room and place their transparency in front of projectionist Jack's flashlight. After a few moments of fiddling with the focus (and momentarily scolding a few pairs of students over mutilated transparencies), the ever-stoic elementary school teacher would continue with the presentation. It was far from perfect and only partially organized, and yet..between the giggles and the break from the tedium of the school day routine, the children later remarked that they'd learned more on that day than on most of the others. And although she didn't exactly say so, it's thought that Ms. Valeran learned a lot that day too about the difference between molding young minds and teaching them.
Lindaland
UBBFriend: Email This Page to Someone! 
posted November 16, 2007 11:03 AM
posted November 16, 2007 12:45 PM
