One of the challenging things for an educator is bridging education into the students personal lives, bringing foreign concepts and asking students to make them theirs is far from easy. I still remember the groans my students made when they told me that I had ruined the hip-hop hit, “I’ll be Missing You.”
“Now every time I listen to it, I will be thinking of Lenny!” students chimed in.
I used the song after completing Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men. Spoiler alert, one the of the main characters dies and to honor him, we had a mock funeral for Lenny and each student was asked to write an elegy. I introduced the concept of elegy by playing one of the best-selling tributes, a song that Notorious B.I.G’s best friend and wife co-created to honor his memory. This was one of my favorite activities because the things the kids produced surpassed all expectation. They sang songs in front of the class, wrote poems, one even recorded his own hip-hop song using his musical recording devices and played it for us in class. At the mock funeral I wanted to cry, not for Lenny, but because of the pride I felt for my kids. That day if someone went inside my classroom they would have thought it was an honors English class!
Currently I work with students who are failing out of high school and have major credit deficiencies. Each month my job is to try to get my kids to complete 4-6 units. A way that I have developed to help them visually see where they are on a daily basis is my Snoopy You’re on Your Way Count Up. As students’ complete units I move a pin with their name up, this shows their progression and how they are moving up towards the monthly work goal. I am the only teacher that does this at my school and the kids love it. The girls think it’s cute because they are not used to see creativity at the High School level. My kids, even when they are close to graduating they need a lot of encouragement. As they approach graduation, our school counselor provides them with paper chains and each time the student completes a unit they get to remove one chain. I have a senior who was eleven credits short of graduating when we had to go on quarantine. I was having a difficult time getting her to turn in work, so I sent her this video. I asked one of my non-camera-shy-coworker to help me make a film removing the units to send to my student to motivate her. This little video has gotten my student excited about graduation and she’s turning in work again. As teachers we are innovators constantly looking for ways to make education relatable and procured by our students.