If you've been holding your breath for that much-anticipated post about Bangladesh, you'd better exhale. This isn't it. Nope. This is a post with the alternative title,
"How the Interactive Notebook Changed My Life."
Stick with this post, and you'll be rewarded.
The interactive notebook has probably been a thing for decades. I know it's been a thing since I began teaching in 2006. There was a professional development about it in spring 2008 for math teachers, so I borrowed Gen Imhoff's to see if I could adapt it to teaching and learning about the continents of the world.
Gen's notebook, filled with angles and degrees and definitions, was so neat and organized that I knew I could never pull it off. Then I migrated to MHS and quite frankly forgot about the concept. I tried notebooks last year with my Explorations classes (the 8th-grade version of which became, 2nd semester, my "zombie apocalypse team"), but gave it up after three weeks, when they completely disbanded the whole class and repopulated it with different people.
This year I vowed to stick with it. It's an "interactive notebook" because the children are supposed to record their notes in it, then take it home and study/highlight their notes, then bring it back and write summaries 24 hours later. They are also supposed to fill in intervening pages with whatever suits my fancy for them to write. I consider it "interactive" because my thoughtful feedback in the notebooks is the only real interaction these kids get with their frazzled geography teacher.
Last week Wednesday, when my boss came in to formally observe my 5th period class, I didn't realize what we were doing. Instead of working in the notebooks, we were filling out a worksheet. The worksheet is entitled, "The Geography of Oil: Global Interdependence." On Tuesday, the students had mapped the worldwide oil trade by drawing a network of multicolored arrows on a map of the world. On Wednesday, we discussed and answered the writing prompt on the back, "Write a few scenarios for what you and your family would do to meet your needs if the U.S. stopped importing oil." The worksheet specified that we should think about food, shelter, clothing, transportation and communication.
"So basically," one of the students commented, "doomsday preparedness."
Oh, dear. There is Apocalypse Blogging, and then there is Teaching, and the twain aren't supposed to meet. But they did, and we came up with a whole bunch of common-sense approaches to what to do about each of these commodities, ostensibly "at the end of peak oil," but we all know the truth is, "in the apocalypse."
It was a pre-writing activity for an expanded essay/story/manifesto (nobody chose "manifesto," and I was unclear on how exactly to explain it) discussing how the student would realistically deal with one or more of these needs in the event of a fossil-fuel shortage. I had already asked them a similar question as a closure activity on Tuesday, and the answer, across the board, was "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" I encouraged the children to write about what would happen on the way to the inevitable truth that, "No one here gets out alive."
Since childhood I have trolled the insides of homes and lockers and backpacks looking for journals to read. As such, the only question that I have to ask myself is why I haven't been assigning journals since day one. Grading them is so instructive. You can tell who is optimistic, who is pessimistic, who plays video games, who has seen what movies (only if you ask, mind you), and you can tailor your conversations with groups based on the information you glean from the notebooks.
Today the children took notes about population and were assigned to take their notebooks home to do the previously-mentioned study/highlight routine. Thus, here is some of what the students came up with, paraphrased and according to the title of this post. I am using the quotation marks lightly. These aren't actual quotes.
"It would suck because students would have to carry all their papers in their hands. There would be no more binders."
"It's amazing how much a tiny fifth grader can get from selling freshly-ripened tomatoes!"
"Our life now is called a 'living nightmare.' We are homeschooled and eat only canned food that we had stored."
"We wash our clothes by hand and we learned to sew and knit."
"He made a list of everything that he would need and then began searching the house top to bottom for supplies (In this case, the "he" in question is the front man in a famous boy band)."
"The entire town of Searchlight was blown off the map, so people had to wait for ambulances to come and take them to Vegas."
"His dad started inventing things like electric stoves and solar cars (I actually had a talk with this child today about electric stoves. Don't worry)."
"Scientists are searching for alternatives." This one was COMMON. These kids have unwavering faith in science.
"Scientists found the answer two weeks later (this from a student whose character fell into a 7-month coma after injuring his head in a football game). Water became the new oil."
"Our way of life is not the way it used to be. It's hard. But life isn't over. It's just different."
So there you have it. The odd-yet-hopeful ramblings of tweens.
Today they asked me who I'm voting for. Of course I told them I will never tell. Today's bellringer was, "Aren't natural resources there for humans to find and use up?"
I ranted about the fact that we were clever enough to dig up black rocks from the ground and turn them into electric light. Won't we be clever enough to invent something new when the black rocks are gone? They all stared at me blankly. They're not used to hearing that argument. In fact, it's hard to google and find ANYONE making that argument. So, if you know of someone, let me know.
More news from middle school this Thursday.
Consider yourselves duly warned.
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