The Bright Side of Being Sick

I'm sick.  I was sick on Sunday and visited ExpressCare, dragged my hoarse sore-throated self into work on Monday because it was only a half day and I was presenting at an afternoon staff development.  Yesterday was a rest day because of the Election Day and last night was a long night of lots of coughing and little sleeping.  So, like all teachers dreading sub plans, I went to work for a half day today before heading back to the doctor. The verdict - bronchitis. That means no school for me tomorrow and more sub plans to write. :-(

But there is a bright side. I have NO voice.  None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.  This is great for the hubby but not so great for teaching...or is it?  I created a very simple PowerPoint to introduce my students to the switch to a genrefied library. This morning my schedule was a 4th grade class followed by a 5th grade class and then planning before I left for the day.  I picked a "teacher" for each class to read the slides and lead the discussion  before they headed off to make category lists for the nonfiction section.  It was eye opening to hear the discussion. When they landed on the slide that said, "Is it easier to locate a book at the bookstore or in the school library?  Why?"  They began with saying what they perceived to be the "right" answers- school because we are here each week and know where everything is, school because we can use Destiny, school because you can help us.  Then one brave soul said bookstore because they have all these labels with genres and categories and I can just go where I think the book I want is and start there.  Others began nodding their head and piggybacking on that statement but saying they could just look at the books in that section, the sections are close to one another, they could look independently because their mom would know what section they were in.  Suddenly, the shift was to bookstore.  And I just sat there, off to the side, not saying one thing during this whole discussion that they were having.  I just sipped my tea and avoided eye contact so as not to taint the conversation.

They moved on to the slide telling them that they would be creating categories for the nonfiction section to be reorganized.  No enthusiasm whatsoever until I eeked out enough voice to tell them that this, in fact, was REALLY happening, that we were the first school in the county to do this and it was happening SOON!  This was not just another scenario being given to them but a real life challenge.  Oh the buzz that occurred then.

I passed out markers, chart paper and waved them off with little to no instruction.  The results were AMAZING.  (I will show those in a later post as I did not take photos before I left.)

Here's some photos of the kiddos hard at work.

So the bright side of being sick today - I didn't have to "sell" anything and they stopped trying to guess the "right" answer and started a genuine conversation.  WIN! WIN!