Not too long ago, I grumbled on here about how no teacher wanted me to come to their class and do a free project with them. I am adept at grumbling, so why hold back if you’re good at something? And besides, I can’t just write about when I’m full of hopes and everything is working out.
Not too many days after I wrote that post, I got some good news. First, the teacher I wrote was a “maybe” for hosting me became a “yes”! I met her, and she was really nice, and I explained the whole project to her, and she loved it! She’s a second grade teacher, here:
It’s a school literally in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina. I drive there (no public transportation in these parts) from the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, so we are all in good company. The road by this school is “Irish Potato Road”, if that helps picture the setting.
I’m really really happy. I can’t wait to see some little kiddies and listen to the strange and wonderful things they have to say about their understanding of the world.
When I met with the teacher, she filled me in on her side of things: she can’t just say yes to projects right away, she has to check with the principal. And even though this project is chock-full of reading, computers, math, creativity, we still have to be very clear about how it’s aligning with the second-grade curriculum. The science topic we choose for the story can’t just be any science topic, it has to align with the 5 approved science units in the North Carolina second grade curriculum.
We talked about that, and I think we came up with a really good topic – something that local scientists have been dealing with, so hopefully we’ll be able to invite some of them as guest speakers, too!
I did learn a lesson: the silence I received from many of the teachers to my email queries maybe weren’t because they didn’t like the project, maybe it was just too difficult for them to see how it would fit in? Maybe they’re too busy to deal with something like this. I don’t know.
A second teacher at a different school had also emailed back, interested, but she needed to “check with the administration”. I expected never to hear again, but she did get back to me after all, and her administration cleared it. I’m going to work with all three second grade classes at that school. We originally said we’d start in January, but I hope we’re going to be able to push it up to November, instead.
And a third teacher at a third school emailed back, and she said I could work with all five fifth grade classes! But when I emailed her back to set up a time to meet, I never heard again. So that one I am still working on.
But this very exciting! And I know I wrote recently too about how much I hate writing grants. I need those grants to pay for the laptop to be used with all these kids making animations, and it would also be nice to get money to pay for my transportation to all these schools, and, you know – I’m not working or anything, so it would be nice to receive some money for my time working with all these classes. Well, I maybe am going to have some good news from that corner, as well. I’ve had good news, and bad news, as far as submitting grants go, and the bad news was all definite and very heart-breaking, and the good news was all tentative. So I won’t say anything more until things have solidified. But if things do solidify, I am going to parachute into the sky with glee!!
mejshasan.com 