ONOMAT...WHATA?

I've been told by the greatest teacher in the world (Rafe Esquith) that to become a great teacher you should do three things.
1. Incorporate your passions as much as possible.
2. Add something new to your teaching every year.
3. Don't give up!

I've taken his advice and have done at least the first two. I am very passionate about theater and the arts. I say the arts because that involves everything from music, to theater, to movies. So this year I decided to add a theater club to my class. We meet 3 times a week for 1 1/2 hours after school and we practice Shakespeare for a performance we are going to put on at the end of the year. As I've been doing this I realized a few things.
1. Don't steal other people's passions.
2. When doing anything, make it fun.

The last one I learned the hard way. I started my theater club with 17 people. That is pretty much a full class of students in our school. I thought I was going to have a hard time finding parts for everyone, but then slowly the numbers started dwindling down. I believe the last person that will leave theater club has just left it and now my number is down to 7. After investigating why she left, she simply said it was boring. OUCH! that hurt my pride a little, but I decided to do something about it.

My passion is theater, not Shakespeare. My other passion is making movies. We decided as a club that we are going to make fun little movies every Thursday in the hopes of spicing up our routine. The students really liked it and I had a lot of fun making it. After seeing the finished project I asked myself why I hadn't been doing this from day one. For your viewing enjoyment, I present the Ellis Theater Club movie debut.



UPDATE:
I entered our video into a contest for NEXTVISTA.ORG and...(drum roll) WE WON!!! They voted on it in a Technology Conference in St. Louis and the crowd chose ours. I'm really happy with my students and their accomplishments. So are they. Visit it here.

And then....

So remember that one time I decided to write a lot and then ended up doing the opposite? Well, that was sooooo 2011. Welcome 2012...February of 2012. OOPS. So it's been awhile so I must have plenty to write about teaching. I know I probably should, but I really don't. I have some challenging students, both academically and behaviorally, but I don't feel I have a lot to report on. Let me see if I can reach into the furthest corners of my mind and bring out something grandiose. Ummmmm, maybe the 6 levels of moral development.




I've worked on this ever since I was in student teaching and I really believe everyone should know about these. I learned about it from my main man Rafe Esquith. He explains them much better than I could, so I will just let him do that. My brother is starting to use them in his class as well and he came up with a brilliant idea. I threw away my old crummy chart that I dabbled with in photoshop and had my brother make new posters that could be hung up in class. It's Star Wars themed and it's great. Here is a look at them.



Well, the kids love it and I hope it makes a little more sense to them when I explain things to them. They are in bookmark form so they can be reminded of them on a daily basis. Also, half of the year is over and I only have 20 kids in my class, down from 24. I guess I'm scaring them off.