PEOPLE LEARNING EVERY DAY !!!
WE LIKE TO CREATE !!!
- St. Mel's Daily Mantra
That is a haiku, written by one of our members. We use it to psyche ourselves up at the beginning of the day, and to send each other on our way at the end. I like it because it covers so many aspects of what we are doing - playing, learning, creating - it uses the words "I" and "we." It's active, expressive, fun. It's a good mantra.Sheff sat in on my classes today - we split the team up into two rather than three for our afternoon work, so there were some seventeen kids in the classroom.
Yesterday I shared a short piece from This American Life where the host interviews young people about "mean" kids they have known. We were concentrating on the questions, not the tales so much, but the tactics of how to get someone to tell a good story. Then they interviewed each other about moments of conflict or personal difficulty, and how they were resolved, if they were.
We arrived at three basic questions for an interview:
WHAT HAPPENED?
HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?
HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THAT?
These three questions can be asked over and over again. Then volunteers told stories about their subjects. We determined the difference between FIRST and THIRD-PERSON.
Today we returned to the stories of the past two days, finishing what was unfinished, revisiting and rewriting in certain cases. I gave special attention where I could. It has been an awful lot of business in three days, and I am looking forward to taking time to read what they have written and work next week on making their writing richer and more descriptive.
