Ms. Rodriguez's Classroom

I went to Christine Dold's presentation on community builders in her classroom, and the practice seemed so infectious I wanted to try it in my own. All of my students feel like they know each other pretty well, but I wanted to try to ease them into a fun activity. We did a rock paper scissors train at the beginning of class. It was really fun, quick, engaging, and most of all, got them out of their seats. This students are really unique, as they asked "why" we were doing this a lot. These high achievers always need a reason! I didn't have a great answer for them! However, I used their original partners from RPS to do an activity in the future. I think I'll do something like this once a week--it's fun to see them have fun that isn't so serious, like academics. I also like to take them by surprise and do something for seemingly no reason at all!

Activator-This is something I will actually have to harness a bit after I introduce and get my participants hooked. Activator can sometimes seem impatient, so I'll have to keep that in check, especially as a participant I think I did it! I'm always a bit impatient with waiting for people to wrap up conversations but I let myself go a little bit. Competitor-I don't think I see this one playing as much a part in this. It's one of the strengths I like the least about myself and I still don't know how this will fit in my seminar. I'm not sure if I got competitive or not....maybe I just compared the effectiveness of others' seminars to my own? Context-This is one of my greatest strengths for this April 6 day! I love learning history and building stories, then having something to look forward to to bring it all together really excites me. I loved helping learners try to think about ways they could implement my role based small group discussion into their own cl...

Being part of this book club group has forced me to read outside of school again. I forget how much I like it, and how good I am at reading! I'm a quick reader but still good at comprehension, so I'm whizzing through this book. I love how Michelle Obama reflects on her time growing up, drawing comparisons to the Chicago I know and the one she knows. She isn't as much of an obvious leader as some of the other book's author's are, but she has a quiet persistence and stubbornness about her that makes her a leader in my mind. She didn't let anyone tell her "no" when she wanted to go to the top schools, and she also didn't stay in a career that made her unhappy. This, to me, is what a leader does: shows how to live a life by example.