WEEK ONE, DAY TWO

The bulk of day two in our first session was spent at the Woodland Park Zoo. Wilson and I wanted to emphasize the power of observational research and felt that the zoo was a great place to engage in this and give the students the opportunity to do so. Upon arriving, we gave them a quick crash course in research and explained why it is important for writers to be able to research.

Throughout the morning, we visited different exhibits and had the kids observe animals for different amounts of time, taking both objective notes and also writing reflections integrated with their opinions. The longest observation period was ten minutes. Immediately following that one, we had them give a short speech to a random person at the zoo (individually) about the animal that they had chosen to observe for the longest period of time. Through this exercise, we had them practice their public speaking skills, specifically voice control and body language.

The kids definitely enjoyed the zoo, as did Wilson and I, but we felt that a little more structure inserted into the day could have made it more productive. More will be discussed down below in thoughts on the day.

After returning to Garfield, we transitioned into storytelling. We had a brief conversation about how writers use facts from observation to make their fictional stories more believable and realistic, and then had the students write a story about one of the animals they had observed. After a ten minute free write on that topic, their next step was to understand how storytelling could make them tremendously more effective as writers when it comes to any sort of writing assignment.

Our belief is that good storytelling is key to engaging your audience and making your writing relatable. We returned to our original question to the kids at the very beginning of class about school uniforms and whether they should be required, but this time, we had them creatively make up stories that would support their points. One of the boys wrote about how dress codes could interrupt the way people dress for religions, and the other wrote about a kid who started a clothing company to support himself as an orphan but couldn't sell shirts due to the dress code.

We finished the day talking about the true power of stories and how evoking emotion in readers and listeners (in speeches) is crucial. The kids were burning out toward the end of the session, so we improvised our lesson plan into a game where they would shoot a play-doh ball at the garbage can. If they missed, they had to give us a time that they cried. Our message was to examine why we cry when reading writing, or even why we cry in general. Generally, it is because something unexpected happens in the text, which was proven time and again by their examples. They both became actively engaged after we got them moving around.

Thoughts on the day:

• Kids experienced some burnout towards the end of the day. It's really tough to go from an environment like the zoo back to a classroom. Next week the whole day will be spent at the zoo. 
• Our improvisation at the end was crucial to the day. We definitely believe something that makes teachers great is the ability to look at a situation where the students aren't responding well and be willing to be flexible and completely change the lesson plan on the fly. Teaching to bored kids isn't effective, so we might as well try something different. 
• We are still battling with the balance between being seeing as "friends" versus educators. On one hand, we aren't in an official school setting and we don't want to be seen as official educators. However, we have to maintain an aura of them wanting to learn from us. Definitely something to improve on. 
• The schedule at the zoo wasn't as tight as we could have made it. In a highly stimulatory environment (such as the zoo), we think that if productive learning and grasping of concepts is going to take place we need to put the kids in a situation that sets them up to succeed in that way.
• The students continue to be heavily focused on the "micro" versus the "macro" ideas that we are trying to impart on them. Our goal is to help them reframe how they think about learning, but the challenge is to show them that through a series of small lessons. 
• We as educators need to make sure to be extremely fired up about activities that we give them in order to make them excited in turn. If we are lackadaisical and disinterested in our explanations, that message is translated into the activity not being fun. 
• We have to fight the urge to quantify success. As much as Wilson and I are against grading and other forms of testing (for the most part), it is such an inherent idea that has been drilled into us for so many years that the only way to measure academic success is by quantifying it. We are doing our best to measure our successes by the impact we have on the students and the concepts that they take away from the class. In five days, we can't make someone a perfect writer. But we hopefully can give them a way to reframe assignments they find boring in school and turn them into something that they are passionate about.

Update on day three coming tomorrow! Feel free to comment, share, follow our blog via email (link is on right), or send us feedback to our email at selfdirectedlearningacademy@gmail.com.