Sunday, April 14, 2013

Friday Friday Friday


One difference that I have noticed between school work and working in a school is the amount of feedback you receive for doing your assignment. What I mean is ... if I put in hours of work creating a power point and give a presentation, classmates are typically aware of the amount of work that I have put in. Even if they aren't that interested they will usually pretend to be and respect the process... I don't think I should assume that younger students will act in the same way and that something I'm trying to get used to.

 This week went well. Our group has decided that they would like to contact an athlete and interview them about smoking. We created a list of questions that we edited this week. I was impressed by their ability to weed out the dead-end questions on our list. For instance Patrick pointed out that one of our questions would elicit a "yes or no" answer and we wanted to get better quality answers.

 We ended up composing an email as a group and I will send it out to the different organizations that we picked. I'm kind of skeptical about getting a response but I think it's worth a try. We've decided to contact the Timberwolves and the Vikings. I think of the two we are more likely to get a response from the T-Wolves. I think what we are asking for is reasonable... we have a list of seven questions that we would like answered. We would like to receive a video response from one of the athletes via email. I think I may attach a short video of the students composing the email.

 I'm hoping we hear something; it would generate some momentum towards completing our PA goals. Our end goal is to create a smoking awareness video and air it on the TV screens throughout the school we will also post it on YouTube.


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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 14, 2013 at 5:01 PM

    Wow, aim for the stars... Professional sports stars, that is! I think it's great that your students a) had the guts to reach out to professionals regarding their issue and b) can already differentiate between good and dead-end questions. Sounds like you may have some future investigative reporters in your group...
    It sounds very exciting, I hope they get a response. (I agree they have a better chance with the T-Wolves.)
    Nice work, Coach!

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  2. AnonymousApril 15, 2013 at 5:26 PM

    That's cool that you guys have a really concrete plan for what you're going to do. That's something my group is sort of haphazardly figuring out right now.
    I think you're probably right that the kids probably aren't aware of how much work we're putting in. When I was in 5th grade, I don't remember thinking about how hard my teacher was working. I think that the kids do give a lot of feedback though, it's just a lot more nuanced. When I work really hard and have really well thought out and planned activities, the sessions run more smoothly, the kids are more engaged. And sometimes when I work really hard, the sessions don't run smoothly and the kids aren't engaged, and that probably means I was working on the wrong thing. I think you can kind of gauge how well you're doing by looking at how the kids are responding to the material.
    Also, last week I called the addiction counseling club and got a message from them today. I'm going to try to get someone from there in to Bancroft to talk to the kids about what addiction is. Would that be something you'd want your group to do? If you wanted to keep it specific to smoking, we could ask someone to come in and speak to your group for half the session and to me and Frankie's groups the other half (since we have an hour now!). Let me know.

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