Day 9 Read. Write. Dream.

Busy day.  Students working like bees preparing for presentations tomorrow.  Amazing to watch them finalize things.  Gathering info to include on posters.  Selecting written pieces they want to read before parents and other students.

I thought they would have to rehearse and rehearse.  Silly me.  They ran through their presentations once for everyone and a few times among their business groups.  They found ways to  remember their parts, taping bits of information on the inside of the poster.  Finding their own voices to hand off to the next person or start the introductions, not simply saying what I had suggested.

It's funny one guy asks me just about everyday what time they'll leave, when they leave the same time everyday.  But he was smiling cheek to cheek when I told him that he and the others how proud I was of their group.  They gave a terrific presentation.

Asked everyone to complete a two question survey about how well the program went and what they would change.  Awesome, wouldn't change a thing, one student said.  I was surprised.  His momma made him come and he wasn't always happy about it.  Liked journaling, the posters, my part (presentation) were other comments. Too much talk someone said.  Were they talking about me?  Not sure, but I can be a chatterbox.   What about the book, the book, the book, I thought?  They liked the book.  But this is summer.    And their peers are in pools and hitting the zoo.  So I guess I'll take awesome, even though I know as I write this which things need to be scraped or improved or remember the time someone said they were bored.

Tomorrow is the final day and presentation.  They will knock it out of the box make their parents happy and move on, I'm sure.  I will remember them as my first Read. Write. Dream. group.  I will think about what worked, what I could have done better and what next.  And I will never look at teaching the same again.  Or students either, I hope.  You can not know young people in a day, a week or two.  But I swear I saw them grow and change.  Or maybe we all did.  Not so much changing, but revealing pieces of ourselves a little more to one another along the way.  Maybe that was our real education