I started this as a post on Instagram, but it needed more explanation, so here we go.
A few weeks ago, a couple of students in my first hour started "silverleafing" one of my tables. By silverleafing, I mean taking gum wrappers, peeling the the foil part from the wax paper, and pressing the foil onto the surface of the table, using their fingertips to make it stick. It was an interesting process. They were listening to what we were doing in class, but they continued to press the foil. At the end of class, they drew a box around it with Expo marker, and wrote a message to not touch the work they had done. Ok, they also signed my name to it. And, oddly enough, the kids in my other classes left it alone.
The students added to the table for several days in a row, bringing wrappers to class that they saved throughout the day before. I won't lie and say that it never became a distraction, but a gentle reminder they were able to do it because it was supposed to help them focus pulled them back into class, most times.
As days passed, an interesting thing happened. At the beginning of the year, this class, while an incredible mix of kids with different views and interests, was spread throughout the room. It worked and it fit the class well. But as the silver portion of the tabletop grew, the spread of the class compressed. Kids moved to the table, and those that didn't watched from a few feet away. They would come to class and offer one another pieces of gum to chew. Kids from other classes started leaving wrappers for the project. The further it went, the more possessive they grew over their group project.
Last week, as the metallic surface spread, I was talking to one of the students, Brooklynn, who had started the project. She mentioned how much she enjoyed getting to do it and that other kids were taking part. This is a student who spent more time staring at her phone than listening to classmates or working with me over the last 2 years. That is no longer the case. She's not the only one. I asked her if she knew why I was happy to let them do it, and she said because it was something they enjoyed. I asked if she noticed anything about the class. She commented that "it is our family activity, Mr. Kohls!"
And that is what made me smile that morning. It warmed my heart. Kids laugh together, they talk more, and they share a seemingly silly, simple pride. So, it's not so silly.
They are laughing together. "So?" you might say. The most important answer: we need to.
We need to laugh. We need to talk. We need to be together. We NEED those things. The learning comes when we are able to do that.
We're learning, and I think it has been even better since the project took off.
I have had a few people ask "Why would you let them do that?"
Why wouldn't I?
