AAS plans from Kate

Good news! I met with Brett MacDonald at Bow Lake Elementary school on Friday afternoon, and it looks like his 6th grade class will be our AAS partner. We're planning on our first visit being Wednesday October 8. The fact that this is a 6th grade class in our district is particularly relevant, since all 6th graders in our district go to a week of experiential envioronmental education out at Camp Waskowitz in North Bend, which is led by high school aged students. Brett pointed out how the curriculum and the experience of working with teenage leaders will really align well with GL.

Noah, what are your thoughts about your first AAS visit? I remember last year that my group emphasized getting to know you type activities, playing name games and using warm ups from class. But I'm also wanting to incorporate the Social Justice Leaders project my students are just finishing up...anyone have suggestions for how we might do this within the 1 hour time frame, with 6th graders?
--Kate

Chris' response to Noah's question

Let the wisdom of the class work it out—keeping in mind, you must be a VERY strong leader guiding the conversation, setting a couple ground rules and not letting it go (the conversation) too long. Use it as “an experiment in democracy—we’ll try this for this one time –and since the solution comes from the kids, it will have given the democratic process credence. But, if you let them divide, that is a missed opportunity to “put everyone in the same boat”. See the Dreikurs chapter on this in Children the Challenge. Do you have that book yet? Get it!!! Great reference as we discuss issues like this all year.

Group Skills

I put the kids in groups for their CLP and there was really only one conflict that arose. There are two girls who may have difficulty working together in the same group. I spoke with one of them privately who claims that the other student does not respect her and she is not the type of person who forgives people who don't respect her. I listened to her vent and I said that this issue might really be a class issue - we all need to be able to work with everyone in the class for GL to be successful. Does anyone have any suggestions how to work with these 2 girls, both of whom have very strong personalities? I don't plan to switch the groups around at this point because that defeats the spirit of GL. Tomorrow is a work day and I want them to be productive.

I want to figure out how to deal with this in the "GL way." My first thought is to just remind the class that it's a group grade for this project and hope that they'll make it work so that their other 3 group members are not at a disadvantage.

Thanks.

socratic seminar

Please provide details if you pursue the seminar and Machiavelli, Kate. Definitely difficult to imagine working in additional content at this point, but my dep't mates would like to see the kids reading excerpts from The Prince and the building is asking for more seminars; my other classes are ahead of the GL kids on both these fronts.

Water 1st

Check out Water 1st's cool new promo video. They came to speak in my GL class last year and did an exceptional job with the kids.

Portfolios

How are portfolios going for people? To be honest, we haven't done much with them in our class yet. I plan to really get them rolling next week. I looked through the binder quickly for entry forms. Are they in there?

previous post 'update' was from Kate H-F

Woops, I'm still getting the hang of this!

update

Thanks, Al and Noah for the list and great links.

My class started a version of the CLP projec this week, though progress has been slow (due to low HW turnout and the funeral and memorial service for the student who was killed in a motorcycle accident last week, and who was part of our class for the first 3 days of school. It's been a rough beginning of the school year at GCHS, but it's also brought us together as a community in some important ways).

I could use some clarification about the transition from the leadership topic to consumption/product trail/coffee readings etc. in the later half of this unit.

I want to include a Socratic Seminar discussion on leadership based around "The Prince" by Machiavelli that I also did last year in this class, and I think this could be a great wrap-up to the unit. Also, haven't set up our Adopt a School partnership for this year yet, since last year's partner has passed it along to another teacher she recommended but who hasn't replied to my emails yet (I'll be calling him by the end of this week). With class jobs, portfolio, class meetings, and this project, my students are very busy and we're just getting into the swing of things, so it's a busy time. I heard from a colleague that one students in my class told her that it's his favorite class--he likes taking notes for the group during class meetings, and he said he likes the structure and format, he's learning important things. What great feedback!

New Resources

I was listening to the Tavis Smiley Show on NPR last weekend and heard some youth speak who participated in Smiley's Youth Leadership Institute recently. Here's the audio link: http://www.tavissmileyradio.com/zen/TSR/guests08/091208/LeadershipYouth_FREEprev.php

A group called Youth Venture is coming to table at our school tomorrow: http://www.genv.net/ They work with students to develop and fund action plans. I see a huge potential to partner with them. GL students who are driven to take their ideas further and start clubs or organizations can get $1000 to get started. They do workshops on writing action plans, etc. but I think we will cover most of that in our classes. I'm going to meet with Alan from YV tomorrow and I hope to invite him into my class to speak when we start working on our first action plans.

Relevant Links

http://www.idealist.org/kt/youthorgs.html

this lists organizations started by youth!!!

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/world/africa/the-secret-lives-of-forests/

this is a possible leader to profile (directly related to water)