Thank you International Festival!

As you may have noticed, my last several posts have been rather negative, and I can't say that that is misleading - the past few days HAVE been very negative, and not just for me. All the teachers at the school have been down recently, not surprising given the emotional climate (the "unprofessional" comment still irks me).

But every now and then something happens to make it all worth it. And today was one of those times.

Among my "event planning" duties (somehow I ended up being in charge of the school's events, basically because no one else wanted to do it and they needed a woman to be on the leadership team) is the International Festival, traditionally when students are assigned countries and research their country, make a poster, etc. At my international school we had something similar, except it only happened in 7th grade. (I was El Salvador and had to find the national anthem, the flag, and a bunch of other things and set up a table on the field with all the other 7th graders. Then people spent the day coming around to our tables, where we were dressed in costume and had information about our country. And maybe cookies.)

Anyway, it seems to me that one of the best things about our school is the small (you might say intimate) size. With only 130 kids, many of the students know one another and because of the social norms of the country we are in, many of the older students are particularly good with the younger students. However, there seems to be a large divide between the schools (elementary, middle, and high), exacerbated by the fact that the elementary classes meet in another building. I know from watching my kids in the halls that they are fascinated by the older students, and we had a particularly successful experience last semester having the high school psychology class come and teach 2nd and 3rd graders for a few days. The high school students were studying child development and this gave them a chance to see firsthand just how differently the younger students think and behave. And the younger students were completely enthralled. They loved working with the high schoolers and were on their best attention-seeking behavior (at one point I looked over and saw one student, AM, crawling on the floor. She wanted to sharpen her pencil and there were too many chairs in the way, so she simply got on her knees. The very cool and detached eleventh grade boy working with her was looking on in complete disbelief. Watching my students with the high schoolers was also a reminder of how much their behavior with me has changed in just a few months, and how much order I have succeeded in instating in the classroom even though it doesn't always feel that way to me!).

Thinking about all this, it occurred to me that the International Festival might be a great time to start crossing some of these grade-level divisions. So I proposed dividing the whole school into small groups (mixed between elementary, middle, and high school) and giving each group a country to work on together. And I was totally amazed when people got behind the idea (or rather, when people didn't flatly refuse to participate) and even okayed using school time to work on the project. So I split the school into 32 groups, made a supervision schedule, made a computer room rotation schedule, worked out all the kinks that popped up (new students, students leaving, students who don't speak English, teachers without free time, etc.) and then crossed my fingers.

Today was the first time the groups met and I was really nervous (those of you who know what I'm like when I'm planning events can probably imagine) and I spent the group work hour running from classroom to classroom checking on everything and rounding up stranded students and missing groups.

But it was a total success. Amazing really. So unbelievably satisfying. The groups that got it really got it and even the ones who were a little hesitant at first were picking up momentum by the end of the hour. And it was just so amazing to see everyone working together. To walk into a classroom and see a little elementary student looking up a a high school student with wide eyes and then catching sight of me and flashing an impish grin as if to say, "Look at me, playing with the big kids". And to see the high school students come to pick up the elementary students and take them by the hand and start talking about where they are going now and what they are doing. To see the middle school student chasing the pre-kindergartener who can't seem to help running out of the classroom and down the hall, trying to ice skate on his shoes, only to slip and fall in exactly the same spot and then pick himself up and start running away again. To have one teacher pull me aside and say, "See that group of students with three high schoolers, one middle schooler, and your third grader? Well, your third grader is running it! She keeps saying, so who's going to do this? And, you do this. She is something." And to open the door to every classroom in the school and see students of all ages, heads bent over books and maps, computer screens and pieces of paper and know that this is only day one. To have my students who were practically quivering with nerves before meeting their groups come running back into the classroom at 3 and not be able to sit down or stop talking they have so much excited energy, each one showing each other proudly the scraps of paper with their various assignments written down on them. To have one teacher say that his students returned "flying". To have another say how much fun it was just to watch the students and how convinced he is even from the first 15 minutes of today that this is just a good idea. To have another teacher share his experience with a junior who, when he was told he should take a leadership role because he was the oldest, looked up with panic in his eyes and said, "but I have no leadership" (this is one of the reasons projects like this are so important, to give the students a chance to develop leadership) and to be sure that he will find a way to lead. To watch one of the outspoken high schoolers fly down the stairs in a flurry, shouting over his shoulder "I lost one!" after he forgot to pick one of his students (she was patiently waiting in her teacher's classroom, but was happy to be collected). To talk to five juniors and seniors who just got suspended for cutting class and tell them that this project isn't about them, it's about their groups and that they have a responsibility to those groups, and then to see them doing their share of the work today, and helping their groups plan for Thursday when they won't be there. To smile into the eyes of nervous kids and tell them to have fun! To catch a bit of school spirit on our otherwise fragmented campus.

That is why today was one of those amazing days. Days when you realize exactly why you are doing what you're doing. Days when I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, when I wouldn't want to miss one second of my kids' craziness (when the high schoolers started coming in to pick up the kids in my class, one girl, SG, came to me and said, "Teacher, I'm going to cry!" I said, "Why?" thinking she was sad because no one had come to get her yet, and she said, "This is the first time our class won't be together!"). And when their cries of "See you tomorrow teacher" really hit home.

Which raises two questions: 1) how do you get more of those days, and 2) how many of them is enough to keep you going?