The Color of Royalty, Passion, Womanhood, and One Happy-Go-Lucky Undergraduate Student During Yesterday's Somewhat Miraculous Turbo Course

24 hours before my class was to be held, I learned that I was getting two Community-Engaged Learning Associates (CELAs), undergraduates who took the course with me last year. I Zoomed with them Tuesday night - both sophomores - and asked how comfortable they were with taking on leadership roles. They said, "we both want to be teachers, so let us help." 

Amazing. 

You can always find the math/science majors because the first thing they do is coordinate crayons accordingly, to make the coloring efficient. 

The CELAs were so helpful and throughout the 2.5 hours I kept walking over to them to ask, "Do you see how this works? The students are engaged and learning, and we have time to discuss the design and what is and isn't working? If you had all the instruction from a sage on the stage, you couldn't move around, interact, and mentor the conversations at each table." They responded, this is cool. 

The day began with a coloring activity. They are visiting 1st grade classrooms in a few weeks and I wanted them to recall instruction from 1st grade classrooms. Step one: draw something you love, especially if it is at Fairfield University. Step two: write two or three sentences about your drawing. The third step will come when we visit 1st grade classes. At first they were like, "Are you kidding us," but soon they were doing it, laughing, and talking about being in 1st grade. That was a win. 

My CELAs wrote a series of questions on the board based from this week's reading, and after we each read an individual children's book and analyzed them for purpose, audience, inclusivity, and exclusivity, I asked, "Who knows what a fish bowl is?" 

Only two students did. Now, I haven't lead a fish bowl in years, but recent graduate students informed me that it was on a Praxis test for teaching and they didn't know what it was. Easy fix. We fish bowled questions from the reading and for 45-minutes the students worked through higher order-thinking skills together. The CELAs wrote their major points on the board. 

This allowed me to jump in with slides I made summarizing the readings for the week (with quotes and page numbers) to say, "Well, your conversation parallels the chapters we read this week. Let's talk about the difference of me lecturing you, or you coming to similar conclusions through guided dialogue). I didn't know how it would go, but it we marvelously. 

We also worked through teacher-interviews assigned to them (with models) and brainstormed possible inquiry questions for the 2nd half of the semester. 2.5 hours of engagement with no breaks. Pretty amazing. 

Next week, we visit a children's literature exhibit at the Pequot Library, and return for more readings/inquiry work the following. Then off to the K-8 classrooms the following two weeks to put some of the reading/coloring into action.

I predict many schools will be delayed because of ice this morning, but my personal region looks to be only cold rain. I'm sure kids and teachers across the state are doing snow-dances trying to bring the storm to their towns so they can get an extra day off. 

For me? I'm looking forward tackling a billion and one items on a much-growing to-do list. If we happen to be stuck at home, this works out great for me. 

Kendall College and Career want their students to think about life in the future: Pizza and friends should be a selling point...I'm sure.