Treasure Hunting, lesson 17
Jan. 15th, 2006 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingToday we learned about learning, or, more specifically, how people learn different things at different speeds, and how everyone has different things they do particularly well. This involved, for entertainment value, an exercise in which the kids wrote their names with their left and right hands, drew pictures with each hand, and then drew with their eyes closed. This went over very well, though I ended up getting dragged in and ordered to draw various pictures, without looking, with my right and left hands.
Now, I have a somewhat unfair advantage, since I actually practiced blind drawing in an art class several years ago, but I cannot draw with my left hand at all. I can't even hold a pen comfortably. So it was a source of great amusment to the kids that I'd draw a picture with my eyes open, copy it fairly closely with my eyes shut and the marker in my right hand, and then fall to pieces when I tried the same thing with my left. (I can get the relative positions pretty accurately, but the lines just skitter all over the place when I work left-handed.)
I spent several years teaching myself to be ambidextrous with Frisbees, since I can't do overhand throws, but for anything else? It's hopeless.
Anyway, we then played a cooperative game in which you put a beanbag on your head (we used Beanie Babies) and move in various ways according to the teacher's instructions. If your beanbag falls off, you're frozen until someone comes by and puts it back on your head. This is easy if you're walking forward and slowly, but when you spin in circles, walk backward, skip, run, or jump, it gets tricky very fast. It was the jumping that finally did us all in and ended the game.
The class was small -- only 6 kids today -- but fairly well-behaved despite that. However, M (a sweet kid but I'd bet a hundred dollars that he has some sort of learning or developmental disability) got extremely disruptive at one point, so I took him for a walk while my co-teacher handled the rest of the class. We went downstairs and spent a few minutes talking and watching some people do Tai Chi in the parlor (beats me why they were doing this during the sermon, but whatever). After that, things went more smoothly.
Next week the teaching staff switches to second-semester, although the first grade will have a couple months of OWL before we get back to the normal Treasure Hunting curriculum. I went through OWL (Our Whole Lives) back when it was still AYS (About Your Sexuality) and only for middle-school kids. The program has been massively revamped over the past decade -- first they switched from photographs to cartoons, and then they added sections for younger kids, on the order of "Where do babies come from?" -- and this will be my first personal experience with the new format. There's going to be one dedicated OWL teacher, and the normal team will act as her assistants until OWL finishes and we take over.
Now, I have a somewhat unfair advantage, since I actually practiced blind drawing in an art class several years ago, but I cannot draw with my left hand at all. I can't even hold a pen comfortably. So it was a source of great amusment to the kids that I'd draw a picture with my eyes open, copy it fairly closely with my eyes shut and the marker in my right hand, and then fall to pieces when I tried the same thing with my left. (I can get the relative positions pretty accurately, but the lines just skitter all over the place when I work left-handed.)
I spent several years teaching myself to be ambidextrous with Frisbees, since I can't do overhand throws, but for anything else? It's hopeless.
Anyway, we then played a cooperative game in which you put a beanbag on your head (we used Beanie Babies) and move in various ways according to the teacher's instructions. If your beanbag falls off, you're frozen until someone comes by and puts it back on your head. This is easy if you're walking forward and slowly, but when you spin in circles, walk backward, skip, run, or jump, it gets tricky very fast. It was the jumping that finally did us all in and ended the game.
The class was small -- only 6 kids today -- but fairly well-behaved despite that. However, M (a sweet kid but I'd bet a hundred dollars that he has some sort of learning or developmental disability) got extremely disruptive at one point, so I took him for a walk while my co-teacher handled the rest of the class. We went downstairs and spent a few minutes talking and watching some people do Tai Chi in the parlor (beats me why they were doing this during the sermon, but whatever). After that, things went more smoothly.
Next week the teaching staff switches to second-semester, although the first grade will have a couple months of OWL before we get back to the normal Treasure Hunting curriculum. I went through OWL (Our Whole Lives) back when it was still AYS (About Your Sexuality) and only for middle-school kids. The program has been massively revamped over the past decade -- first they switched from photographs to cartoons, and then they added sections for younger kids, on the order of "Where do babies come from?" -- and this will be my first personal experience with the new format. There's going to be one dedicated OWL teacher, and the normal team will act as her assistants until OWL finishes and we take over.
