Letters from Lisa

I’m on my way to Antarctica! Watch this space for photos and travelogues very soon.

I’ll be back on Jan. 4th.

Have a safe and relaxing holiday everyone!

I can’t believe it’s December. That changes everything.

Time has passed at an alarming pace this fall. Maybe it’s because I was at school most of the summer working on curriculum and that seemed to pass slowly, while it always seems to fly by when the kids are around. Maybe it’s because I’ve dipped my hand into so many different projects and areas, and every time I go somewhere, my agenda gets interrupted by three other things. For example, yesterday I went down to the cafeteria to show some printouts to a teacher, and was suddenly surrounded by 3rd graders demanding more lines in the play.

Maybe it’s me. Although I’m going on six and a half years with the school, this is only my 2nd year in my current incarnation as specialist/administrator, so there’s been a fairly steep learning curve for me as far as how to manage my time, how to teach classes of kids that I only see for 90 minutes a week, and how to coordinate with the rest of the staff and be useful to them. Part of my job has been to build up our lower elementary science program, and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been closing in on some favorite topics and methods.

I’m a fairly structured teacher, and I have a definite set of goals for every class that walks in the door, but I also try to seize on a good idea when it pops up unexpectedly and alters all the carefully laid plans. For example, I originally wanted all of my 3rd grade classes to create posters for the planets in the solar system with me on the computer, listing important facts as we learned them and then evaluating whether there could be life on that planet. We started it with the first group and found that it worked great - they looked at every picture and piece of information with a critical eye and therefore processed the information a lot more thoroughly. But then, literally 45 seconds before the next group of kids walked in the door, I thought, “Why are they going to want to create posters when they can see the first class’s posters already hanging up? Maybe I should have them do another kind of project instead. They’re fairly advanced in their thinking - maybe we could do a slideshow.”

You can’t do anything with these kids unless you are willing to stretch it as far as it can go. They don’t care that the unit is supposed to finish at the end of December and therefore there “isn’t time” to debate for 20 minutes about whether to call the slideshow “Mystery of the Galaxy” or “A Journey Through the Solar System”. (We eventually decided on “Mystery of the Galaxy” because galaxies are bigger than solar systems - and I hadn’t been planning to cover galaxies with them!) They had fantastic ideas - starting the slideshow with a countdown and blastoff, for example - and I intend to shove as many in the finished product as I can. And now it’s December, and I’m thinking, “Man, we should have started this a month ago.” Next year…

Maybe I’m also feeling the time crunch because I’m traveling this winter. I don’t usually take my big trips during the school year, for obvious reasons, but Antarctica is the exception. You can’t go in July and August, so here I am, taking almost the biggest trip of my life in the middle of a busy school year, and with a lot less foreplanning than I usually do for my trips. (I planned both Australia and South America about 6 months in advance - this one, I booked 2 months in advance. Crazy!) I’m planning to do all of my teaching about Antarctica after winter break, so I’m not too worried yet about gathering stuff to show the kids, but on the other hand it DOES mean that I have to be finished with everything else because once I show up at school with penguin pictures, whatever other subject we’ve been discussing is going to fly out the window.

I thrive on this kind of pace and I love to be busy - I just keep reminding myself to slow down enough to enjoy it.