During the week before Winter Break, I decided that I wanted a collosal waste of time to eat up part of a class period, but I also wanted my students to practice for their upcoming semester exam. These two desires resulted in me passing out blank paper to my students and instructing them to draw a map of the world freehand. I then had them label various things on the map.
I was not used to seeing the level of engagement that resulted from this horrible, horrible activity that I would have hated as a student. I would have considered every second of hand-drawing a world map to be a special kind of torture chosen just because I hated it by a cold, uncaring universe.
My students loved it. Some freaked out, so I reminded them that, "this isn't art class. See?" I modeled my own lack of skills for them on the document camera.
While grading the maps, I came upon several no-name papers, including the two examples below. "Whose UGLY maps are those?" I thought. Oh, look. Each one has a little heart at the tip of Lake Michigan, which means...you guessed it: they're mine!
Ah-hahaha. Geography is definitely not art class!
I only found two of my own maps in the grading pile. I remember that my maps got worse and worse as the day went on...by 6th period I gave up and used a map from the morning.
I normally wouldn't link the Goshen College article, but I thought it had some important reminders about motivation.
Now that the world has not ended, it is time for us to pursue things we normally wouldn't, and to do it with reckless abandon (within reason, of course).
What crazy thing have you done lately that yielded a positive result? What wild idea will you try next?
No comments:
Post a Comment