A Semester Long Flex Activity

I'm trying something different this semester with my Communication I students. We've often looked at our use of cell phones, but they often do not agree with the findings. They can get pretty protective about their phones and their use. So this semester, I'm trying a different angle. One of the forms of communication that we are losing due to phone usage is the ability to have conversations. I cannot even name the number of people I have had conversations with that are simply one sided. The other person loves answering questions about herself, yet she doesn't ask any back. So we are concentrating on conversation this semester while at the same time, using our phones less.  Tricky, I know.

We are beginning with the folks in our room. It's a safe place and an easy way to practice conversations. This will grow to outside the classroom and finally into the dreaded lunch room. I'm going to be asking each student to sit by people they normally don't sit with at lunch. From there, they will have to have conversations. Once we accomplish that, we will take this skill outside of school. I would love to visit independent living areas and nursing homes.

I have never tried a semester long Flex, but I think this is the idea behind all of it. My hope has always been that my students will experience something and take it upon themselves to simply continue doing it. So we are trying that. My hope is that we can grow as communicators, but also grow as people when we get to know other people's stories.

I have plenty to work out to use more elements of TfT, but this is a start. Stay tuned.

Prayers in a bag

To end our To Kill a Mockingbird unit, I wanted to have a Flex plan that was applied to the social ladder. The Freshmen class chose to work with elderly folks. We wanted to try to create a way to let elderly people know that they are important folks in our society.
Our first plan was to go to Prairie Ridge several times to create a relationship with them. That fell through. I have too many Freshmen, and I have the Freshmen classes spread out over the day and not at good nursing home times. After about a month of trying to come up with an idea, the activities director at Prairie Ridge thought that my students could simply pray for the residents. But it was not as simple as it sounds. The Freshmen picked a person. The goal was to write three prayers a week. At the end of the week, we discovered some wrote the prayers for the wrong person. We even had wrong names (even though they had a list).

  So some residents got 6 prayers, while another just received one. At the end of the week we put those prayers in an envelope  and gave them to the Ridge. For the next week, I just went down the list. Did that go any better?  Not really. Again, several students wrote the wrong person again!  (We need to work on listening skills! ) This time they put their prayers in a card of their own. Again, they were delivered to the Ridge.
Today I received two very sweet notes from some residents. One uses our prayers as a morning devotion. Another one thanked us for the prayers. "It is a blessing to be remembered," is what he wrote. It was touching.
Like most things in life, this is not what we set out to do. Yet, it has been a blessing and good reminder. So often in life we try to do all these really big things, and while doing that we often forget about the very powerful and simple gift of prayer. My deep hope is that my Freshmen will remember this simple Flex activity and bring that into their everyday lives. My deep hope is that I will remember that too.

The Mystery Unit-making it real.

    For several years now, I've been trying to TfT my Freshmen mystery unit. We have found over the years that if there is one place that non-fiction and fiction collide, it's with mysteries or solving crimes. This year we read several fiction stories, a fiction play and a non-fiction story. We also viewed fiction and non-fiction mystery stories. But in order to make it a little more real, we invited the experts into the class. After reading a story about a car accident, Deputy Waylon Pollema visited class with a little mystery of his own. He shared a car accident and pictures with the students to see if they could unwrap the mystery of the accident. What the victims told and what the accident scene told were not the same thing.

After all our reading, we ended our unit with a crime of our own. Three freshmen committed a set up crime at school. Through the use of Deputy Nate Huizenga and Deputy Pollema, eye witnesses, evidence left behind, and the school camera, the freshmen had to solve the mystery. It was fun to watch them unravel the evidence.






I was also quite surprised how "knowing the story", my storyline, fit with this unit. Every time we looked at a story, fiction or non-fiction, the idea of looking at the entire story played in important role.

Reflections on our experience at the Village.

I believe that I did a good job of being a Community-builder, I just didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to do. I lived my plan out by being friendly and starting conversations with the residents, I was just shocked by the amount of effort they put into speaking even though I knew they could not communicate very well before we arrived. As we talked about on the bus on the way back to Orange City, it was incredibly difficult for the man in the reading room to speak one mumbled word. Watching the residents communicate with the workers I learned how much we depend on speaking to communicate and saw first hand how frustrating it is when others cannot listen to you. I was also challenged to use different forms of communication like posture and facial expressions to see what the resident was trying to communicate. One thing that was tough about this morning was watching the residents try to communicate with me. Seeing them struggle to form sentences and listening to their stories about why they cannot talk very well made all of the difficulties in my life seem small. As I talked about in my previous journal response I was hit by how much I take for granted my ability to do simple things like talk and walk. It was also very tough for me to communicate with the residents because I am used to speaking quickly with my friends and had to deliberately slow down when I responded to their questions. Though it was difficult to communicate with the residents, it was delightful to hear their stories and how they ended up at the Village. Each resident was full of happiness even when they were describing the horrible car accidents that changed their lives forever. Despite their situations they were able to find joy and I enjoyed talking to them about my own life as well.

Yesterday, I picked the community-builder knight's armor trait. I was working on using peace, encouraging, and being honest. I didn't do as well as I wanted, but as a group, I believe we still build community. I went with some of the residents well they were drawing and painting. Well, I was there the lady told us that through art the residents have a way to paint their emotions. I learned communication is really a wonderful gift. I tried talking to many of the residents and most of the time I go no response verbally. Even though some didn't respond verbally I still got lots of smiles. This morning was tough because it showed me truly how blessed I am and how I take the simple things like talking for granted. It was also a struggle because you want to do more to help the residents. It was also delightful because even though the residents have everyday struggles they are also so happy and joy-filled. Overall I really enjoyed this experience because it helped me realize my blessings.

I think I successfully lived out being a Temple - Respecter. The people were delightful, so it really wasn't that hard. I learned that communication cannot just be a one-way interaction - even if it seems like you really won't be understood, or the person doesn't verbally respond, there are still responses that you get, even if it isn't verbal. So getting a response by form of some kind of eye or hand movement in the nonverbal room was pretty cool. I always find it tough to see people not be able to do basic tasks, not that I don't love them, it can just be such a harsh reminder to me that the world really is broken, and there isn't anything that we can do to make it truly unbroken. Yes, we can help maybe mend it a bit by loving others, but it can just be such a reminder that some things are out of our control. However, it was really delightful to talk to some of the people, or even just be by their side and see how the majority of them seemed so happy. I thought it was really enlightening how many people just had smiles on their faces, especially Todd, a man that sat at my table near the end of our time, who just had a smile on his face the whole time. 

In our visit to the Village this morning, I was awed by the employees' ability to glean meaning from the residents they assisted. What came across as jabber to me was obviously a request for a puzzle, what seemed to be a spasm was clearly a reach for a cup of coffee. Communication can be built upon significantly by time spent observing the sender, and much patience is required from the receiver. I struggled in knowing how much to say or do: Would I come across as ignorant or rude if I asked a resident a question they couldn't answer? Am I going to provoke a poor reaction if I touch them? However, it was delightful to make re-connections with residents that I knew from church or volunteer work, and it really was encouraging to witness the dedication each employee had to the residents.

The Gift of Communications

The first chapter of our communications textbook refers to communication as a gift. My learning target was for students to live out communications as a gift. So yesterday, the Communications I class experienced, through role playing, what it is like to lose the ability to communicate. One student lost the gift of speech and had to communicate that she wanted to watch a ball game on television. Another could only use her eyes to communicate. to ask that her left leg be moved. The class found it difficult and frustrating to try to figure out what these people needed. They also found it frustrating to try to communicate.

They were then assigned a pre-flect to prepare us for our block schedule class the following day. We were going to travel to Sheldon to visit The Village. My deep hope for the students was that they realized the gift of communication and also saw the blessings of technology that enables folks to communicate today. So in their pre-flect, they had to come up with a game plan for our visit. I asked them to pick a Knight's Armor that they could live out and also notice how impacting  and perhaps life changing it is to  know the story of the residents. 

The visit was great. One section of students worked with souls who were non-verbal. Another group went to an art room. The room I stayed in was a reading/ conversation room. The men in there were very willing to share their stories. And we were shown the many ways workers at the Village used to assist in communication. After that we went to the break room with the residents. On our way back to school, we reflected a bit on the bus. The students enjoyed talking to the residents. One student noted that for one man to say three words it took him about two minutes. He said, "It looked like it hurt him to say a word." One girl noticed that the art work helped the residents communicate. She said, "The art work was awesome." 

On Friday, we will write a reflection, talk about our visit more, write thank-you's to the residents and workers, and discuss the blessing of communication. The learning target was to see the gift. We did that and even more.  

Flexing Summer Ideas

As summer is upon us, (everybody exhale:) I am looking at working on my English curriculum. While doing that, I'm also looking at bringing TfT elements to my co-curriculars (I've also found some dandy ideas for other teachers). One thing I'm working on is a Flex activity for the audiences of our spring production, which will be the The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Since this is based on a book, I'm looking at inviting others to bring a favorite children's book or books to the production. We always give a matinee and I was thinking that giving the area grade school children a chance to be involved would be a good thing. I don't have it all figured out yet, but the idea is to gather books to give to the Castle Hospital in Sioux Falls. Edward himself goes on quite the journey in his story and folks who are in a children's hospital are on quite a journey too. I'd like to have my cast make some sort of note for each book. And then of course, we'd deliver them. Stay tuned!

Finding FLEX in Family

For over 30 years, I have worked with Freshmen on writing Family Projects. Stemming from a love of gathering my own family story, I've put that in my curriculum. But up to this year, I have never added a FLEX activity to it. This year we are trying a FLEX. It has been a painful journey!

One part of the written Family Project is an essay of thanks. Who is one person in your family that you are thankful for?  Why? That's the premise of the paper. This essay will be mailed to the person that is the topic of the Freshmen paper. I thought it would make a lovely gift, and it certainly is a real need for real people.

Draft #1: Shallow and poor writing. It disappointed me that they took this so lightly. It was just basically fulfilling the assignment without much thought or depth. So we went back to drawing table. I showed the picture of an ice berg and applied that to their writing. We talked specifics. I outlawed the phrase "there for me". Then I asked this question--If this person were gone tomorrow, what would you have liked to have said?

My deep hope is that they dig deep. I want them to be brave enough to write what this person means to them with detail and specifics. And of course I want it to be good writing, which is isn't right now. So stay tuned. Draft #2 is up to bat tomorrow.