A walk through the halls

I just got done taking a look at my calendar for the past week at Henley. It goes without saying that it was quite full. There were school board meetings, meetings with parents, interviews, conferences with teachers, a meeting with the superintendent, some meetings before school, and many after school hours. This is all part of the job, and all of these activities are helping me to work toward building the best school possible for our Henley Hornets. I’ve never been a big fan of meetings, however, and I’ve found that they can wear on a person. Some people re-energize from these by having a cup of coffee or a Diet Coke, but not me (although I do drink my fair share of Diet Coke). For me the best way to get the juices flowing and to get energized is to walk through the halls of Henley and to pop my head into some classes. I just got back to my office from such a walk, and wanted to share with you some of the absolutely wonderful experiences that I had.

Each seventh grade social studies room that I walked into was alive with students working together in small groups on a US geography lesson. They were using graphic organizers, technology, and cooperative learning to divide the United States into several geographic regions.

In an eighth grade civics/economics class, students were writing their first research papers of the year. They were position papers on topics of their choice. The students I spoke with were forming arguments for or against such diverse and relevant topics as the war in Iraq and the constitutional rights of students. It was refreshing and invigorating to see these kids forming logical arguments for or against their position. When I engaged them with questions from the “other side’s” perspective, they were quick to challenge my way of thinking in favor of theirs.

My next stop was the gym where a vigorous game of “crab soccer” was underway. If you’ve never experienced this game, it is a sight to behold, as students crab-walk around the gym attempting to kick over sized balls over a wall of students who are trying to prevent them from doing such. The noise level alone in a crab soccer game is something I’ll never forget.

Finally, I stopped into a seventh grade math class that really had kids thinking outside of the box. Robert Marzano, in his book Classroom Instruction That Works, identifies nine research-based strategies that have proven to be effective means of raising levels of student achievement. Two of those techniques were in play in this class—identifying similarities and differences, and creating nonlinguistic representations. This teacher was putting a new spin on Venn Diagrams by having students identify similarities and differences between different types of numbers (real, rational, irrational, whole, integers, etc). Instead of the traditional three or four circle diagram, he asked them to get more creative on how they could classify these numbers. One group used a map of North America and broke the numbers into different geographic regions, one used a picture of a pancake breakfast with butter, syrup, and the pancake itself representing different groups, and one group had a girl who was wearing two-foot wide flower on her head. Unfortunately, my time in this class was limited, and I never got to saw exactly what her group had in mind, but she caught me after school and let me know that the results were hilarious.

Needless to say, I returned to my office refreshed, invigorated, and incredibly pleased at the work the teachers at Henley were doing. I know that I could walk through our halls on any given day and relate similar tales of students who are engaged and thinking.

What a year this is going to be!

Here are a few dates to keep in mind over the next couple of weeks:

September 5, 7:00-9:00 Back to school night
September 14, 4:00-5:30 6th grade social
September 25/26—Interim reports distributed
September 26—PATSO magazine drive kickoff
September 28—Back-to-School Dance, 4:00-6:30

Go Hornets!