Thursday, September 14, 2006

Responses

Well by popular (and by popular i mean two...) request, it appears you're interested in what my students have to say.

Period 1
This was actually a less animated discussion than I was expecting it to be. It's a small class and they're very on task, so I don't mind talking about other stuff with them. Of course there was a tangent - they suggested that frustration with homework/school is causing teens to act out. Someone brought up the fact that there's a new statistic circulating out there that the amount of homework students do has increased significantly in the last few years. I countered with the fact that we've been watering down the curriculum - something they also agreed to. I asked what they thought we should do about a "more of less" approach in education, but no one came up with anything. It did make me think about my own homework giving tendencies though.

Period 2
I totally expected these guys to talk through most of the hour and they did. If only to get out of doing math... There was lots of speculation over motive, which of course no one really knows right now. Also some discussion around how violence is becoming a bit of a social disease and different trends in the states. Somehow we wound up talking about violence here at home and got into a very interesting discussion over the whole "east vs west" issues Stoon has going on. I had some help in enlightening some students in how this picture of a "shiny clean east side" and a "gang, crime and violence filled west side" is something supported by the media and east siders looking to feel better about where "they" live.

Period 3
Some maturity issues here - they were more interested in hypothesizing ridiculous scenarios that would require our school to go into lockdown. A pack of cougars? A crazy person with a sword? We covered quite a lot on inequalities...

Period 4
Grade nines. Mostly they were concerned for their own safety and were worried something could happen here. About half had been in a situation in their elementary schools where a lockdown had been necessary (crazy guys with knives apparently). Nothing overly insightful was said.

More exciting was my Human Rights meeting at noon - they are so keen!! Almost all of them want to join my peer support group and suggested (without me telling them that this was the kind of thing a peer support group would do til after) that they'd like to do awareness type stuff for the grade 9s in their ethical living classes! So wonderful.

5 comments:

Rach said...

I think that period 3 is my favourite. I vote for ninja's riding ninjelephants...those would kick some ass.

bag marla said...

was anyone upset about the media coverage? Because I sure am. How many times do we need to talk about music, videogames, and goth culture? I mean, really, like those are the problems. Why can't we focus on the real issues? Why? Why? WHY??!

chelle said...

well there hadn't really been a whole lot of media coverage on causes by the time we were talking about it. but marlito, i think you are getting a little worked up - clearly this is the fault of marilyn manson. why can't you just accept the facts like a rational and logical person?

bag marla said...

You're probably right... I mean, I do go shoot someone everyday because I used to play videogames as a child...luckily I have yet to be caught.

Anonymous said...

DS Sean said...

Hehe. Damn Rachel is so right. And equally obsessed with ask a ninja as I am apparently.

Hmm, I wonder if those midget ninjas, or MINJAS, would be able to shut a school down?