#24
Yesterday's Nice Thing: Telling the story of Joan of Arc and seeing how engaged everyone was
Today was tough, getting up. Mostly because I couldn't decided what to do next. We had finished Joan and Eleanor and it was incredible - but somehow it seemed wrong to move on to the next topic. I thought that maybe for the next two days... what would we do? Brian Boru? It seemed wrong too... I looked to medieval medication, food, cities, societies.... but that all didn't seem to fit, and then, I thought, let us do an improve play on Joan of Arc. We could have three groups doing three plays and I could help one group... it would be so nice for them to do something different. So today we could do the plays in three groups and then we could do the play as a whole class tomorrow and that would be really nice.
I do most of my class planning in bed - whether it is research, reading, thinking or planning. In fact most of my time is spent thinking about what we do next. It is all consuming. People don't understand this. I honestly don't know how they did this before the advent of the internet. As a teacher I spend loads of my time researching and reading up subjects before I distill them for the students. That's the other thing, the role of the teacher is a bit like Shiva and the Ganges - you have to take the force of the world around you and bear it, and then allow the warmed information you have received to then be given to the students in a nurturing manner.
Like yesterday, for instance, I talked about Joan of Arc and how she wore men's clothes to prevent herself from being raped - and how when she stopped doing so, she was. After that she had to wear men's clothes again and this was seen as part of her recanting. Right, now to prep in writing for the day.
Today was tough, getting up. Mostly because I couldn't decided what to do next. We had finished Joan and Eleanor and it was incredible - but somehow it seemed wrong to move on to the next topic. I thought that maybe for the next two days... what would we do? Brian Boru? It seemed wrong too... I looked to medieval medication, food, cities, societies.... but that all didn't seem to fit, and then, I thought, let us do an improve play on Joan of Arc. We could have three groups doing three plays and I could help one group... it would be so nice for them to do something different. So today we could do the plays in three groups and then we could do the play as a whole class tomorrow and that would be really nice.
I do most of my class planning in bed - whether it is research, reading, thinking or planning. In fact most of my time is spent thinking about what we do next. It is all consuming. People don't understand this. I honestly don't know how they did this before the advent of the internet. As a teacher I spend loads of my time researching and reading up subjects before I distill them for the students. That's the other thing, the role of the teacher is a bit like Shiva and the Ganges - you have to take the force of the world around you and bear it, and then allow the warmed information you have received to then be given to the students in a nurturing manner.
Like yesterday, for instance, I talked about Joan of Arc and how she wore men's clothes to prevent herself from being raped - and how when she stopped doing so, she was. After that she had to wear men's clothes again and this was seen as part of her recanting. Right, now to prep in writing for the day.
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