After School Movie Club

Over the weekend, I broke down and purchased a small collection of Flip Video Cameras.  My curriculum calls for Windows Movie Maker, but until now, I had no way to upload photos.  I asked a number of people for help… and no one had a solution.  I brought in my super old school camcorder and bought a UBS cable from Radio Shack, but I didn’t have the requisite administrative rights to log in and have the computer recognize the device… or whatever.  In short, it didn’t work.  So my donation to the district this year (in addition to the dozen pairs of scissors that have since walked out of my classroom and the freezer from my parents’ garage) – 3 Flip Video Cameras. 

The silver lining in this story is… Gustavo!!!  Pardon the exclaimation points.  That is how he writes his name.  And nothing describes his personality better than that punctuation.  Oh! Where to begin…?

Let me start with this – imagine Gustavo bursting into my room the other day, demanding that I type in my password because he NEEDS to get onto YouTube immediately – he has “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” stuck in his head and he needs to hear it.  Now!   I few days later, I’ve probably heard every version of the song – Judy Garland’s, Katherine McPhee’s, little 6 year old Connie’s, that big Hawaiian guy named “IZ”, Jason Mraz… and a host of others.  Don’t worry – Gustavo sings along to every version.  (He was also recently a back up dancer in our school’s production of Grease).

So enter the Flip Cams, and Gustavo!!! is now a producer.  Today I glanced up from my grading project to realize that “After School Movie Club” had spontaneously developed.  The set – PowerPoint and Google Earth.  The actors – two students, Brayan and Kelsy.  The costume – Brayan wore a big sheet of red butcher paper like a cape.   He was, of course, the “hero.”  The stage – all of my Computer Applications text books, piled in neat rows on the floor.  Wind machine (fan) – check!  Taylor plugged in a speaker and found a website of sound affects, so I heard the sound of rain, applause, laughter, even the sound of someone peeing (followed by bursts of laughter).  Gustavo, behind the camera, bossed the kids around and created his movie.  It was HILARIOUS!  I can’t wait until he posts it to YouTube.

Thank you, After School Movie Club, for making my donation feel so worthwhile.

Spring has… Sprung?

Today I tackled a massive after-school project:  posting quarter grades.  It requires becoming current on your grading (after chasing down overdue assignments, digging through kids’ network folders to find the stuff they forgot to turn in and sorting through stacks of papers).   Our grade book doesn’t sync with the system that we post our grades to, so, class by class I comb through students’ scores and post them.  Then I add comments – “A pleasure to have in class” is number 101.  The numbers go into the 500’s.  I am frustrated that I cannot customize the messages, and it takes a while to scroll through them to find the appropriate message for each kid.  (To parents who wonder why their teachers don’t post comments on report cards – this is why!)  But the very least I can give my kids are short phrases of feedback and recognition.   Yes… it is somewhat pathetic.

By 8:00pm, the job was done.  My room had been tidied.  And I had changed over the date on my white board.  I left the building and… ah ha!  It was still somewhat light out!

Driving home I noticed that spring has sprung – I hadn’t noticed!  I hadn’t seen all the blossoms on the trees or the flowers poking up through the earth.  What?!? The tulips are out?  Where have I been? 

Oh yes… I’ve been living in a windowless classroom since September.