Ubuntu

My 8th graders focused on society: challenges society faced, challenges individuals faced because of society, how to positively contribute to society, who is in charge of society, what is society... And the list goes on.

We were going to read the short selection "Out of Bounds" by Beverley Naidoo in our Interactive Readers, but to preface this reading, the students had to know about apartheid and it's effects on South African society. We brought in the idea of interdependence and ubuntu.

Ubuntu is the philosophy that we are all connected; all humans rely and depend on one another because we are human. The idea of "I am who I am because of who we all are." We all belong to a greater whole and if one of us is humiliated, then all of us are.

This concept was kind of hard for my kids to grasp at first:

"But I don't need to rely on others, I can do what I want for myself."
"Ms. S., I'd rather be a hermit."
"The guy from Castaway didn't have to rely on others, he relied on a volleyball."

Yes, all of those were responses that I received from a variety of my students. And many of them had similar thinking. Haven't we always taught them to be independent? To rely on themselves for their success and their success alone? That no matter what their peers are doing, they should never be sucked into those negative pressures?

Yes, we've taught them that.

But ubuntu has a bigger picture. That if we are independent, we must not forget that when others need our help, we must be there for them. That if we are independent, if we realize we need the help of others, we must not hesitate to ask. That our overall success doesn't mean pushing others down in the process, but lifting everyone up. That if our peers are engaging in negative activities, then we need to figure out a way to help them. That's ubuntu.

I had to figure out an activity to make them see this. One of my coworkers suggested the rubber bands-red solo cups-string activity that she found on another teacher's blog.

I'm always up for a challenge, and you know my 8th graders were too.

We needed red solo cups (6 per group), rubber bands (one per group), and string (tie the pieces of string to the rubber bands. I would suggest 4 per rubber band so you would have groups of 4). If you clicked on the blog link, you would see the instructions for that activity - I wanted to challenge them further to show them what ubuntu was all about.

The challenge in that blog ends with students stacking all 6 cups in a pyramid using teamwork. I took it a step further and said that all group members had to close their eyes except for one. The ones that had their eyes closed could maneuver the string and rubber band apparatus to stack the cups into a pyramid, but the member with their eyes open could not touch the apparatus at all. These students were the ones that had to instruct those with their eyes closed. They were "in charge." They were "the leader."

Needless to say, that challenge to much longer than the first one. But, it was successful. After all was said and done, we sat and had a discussion.

The students realized that when everyone had their eyes open and they worked together to pull and adjust the rubber band accordingly, it was easy to accomplish the task. But, when there was only one leader and the rest of them were hindered, it was harder to do. They realized that they all must rely on each other to get something done in a cohesive, quick, and efficient manner. One person leading a society of people who are "underprivileged" or "set back" in some way is not ubuntu.

At the end, I showed them this video, "The Allegory of the Long Spoons."

We reflected on the video and how it fit into our challenge activity. Then, we took it back to our essential question about society.

By the end of the year, I didn't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that my students brought up this activity, what it taught them, and how fun it was. They were engaged and enjoying it, but it also forced them to think about what they see as independence vs. interdependence.

Needless to say, my 10th graders are going to get the same lesson. Our year-long focus is not society, but personal responsibility. And I'm so sick of lame icebreakers, so I'm bringing in the Solo Cup Challenge to the high school level. Let's see if they're as good as my 8th graders at working together.

Sleeping In Is Overrated

...at least I try to tell myself that.

Why is it that I go to sleep at a late, late hour and wake up at an early, early hour? I know this blog is called "Run. Teach. Sleep." but at this point we can totally nix the whole "sleeping" part.

Here I am, up at 4:30 a.m. Although the time on this blog is going to read a little bit later, I'm sure you can take my word for it. There's no sense in bragging about being up at 4:30 in the morning.

Yet, even though I'm up so early - I have no immediate desire to get up out of bed. It was hard enough to go down and turn my Keurig on, but when I'm up, I'm up for good. And not only am I up so early on a weekday, I'm up early on a Tuesday.

For my audience that doesn't know the significance of this: Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days of sitting in traffic for an hour, post up in the lecture hall for 4 hours, try to stay awake through class for 2 hours and 15 minutes, and then drive back home (sans traffic, thank goodness).

And why does my psycho-pants self get there so early, you ask? I have this innate fear of being late and this intense anxiety of sitting in traffic. If I left any later, I would sit in traffic for over an hour. If I left after the traffic, I would more than likely be late. So my happy remedy for this dilemma is to leave extraordinarily and ridiculously early, do work that I would just be doing at home anyway, and leave it at that.

So I guess today's early wake up call is going to mean an extra cup of coffee down the road at some point this evening. Which goes against doctor's wishes in my last post. Whoops.

Summer Time... And The Livin's Kinda Easy

I can't complain. I don't have to wake up early on purpose, sleepily get ready, and maybe scroll through my Twitter feed to see the biggest news stories of the day / hilarious retweets. I just wake up early because that's what I do, make my cup of coffee, and read all of the blogs in the land. Probably go on a morning run before the humidity and heat hit. But all on my own time! No 6:30 am obligations. (Although, my doc said that I need to cut back on the caffeine. I don't think she realizes that caffeine has replaced my blood and without it, I die.)

But before you say that teachers have it easy in the summer time, please consult the list of things that I have done NOT because they're thrilling, but because I need to... for work purposes:

- Type up 3 case briefs, a midterm, and a final exam for a School Law class Tues/Thurs from 7-915 at a "supposed to be 30 min, but more like an hour away because traffic is horrendous and speed cameras make everyone slow down from 70 to 35" location.

- Re-type first and second semester curriculum, not just so I can familiarize myself with my new position, but because whoever okay-ed the layout on this curriculum may not have kept those of us in mind who need a linear lay out of activities, standards, and assessments.

- Re-read Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Julius Caesar and read Fahrenheit 451, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, annotating the bejeezus out of them for vocabulary and elements that my students need to understand before they grow up to big giant juniors.

- Write my lesson plans, gather my materials, browse and shop TpT stores.

- Went to the MSDE conference last week at Reservoir HS. Learned a lot, but still a lot to learn.

- Figure out how to make more $$$$ to pay for this full-price grad class coming up. Yeah, you thought they paid for everything? Think again.

OK, so that's my proof that I'm not just sitting around doing nothing. Which is what I did today, but in all fairness, I did create a couple lesson plans before my Netflix-binge-watching needs took over.

Now that I've listed all of the mundane things about my summer, let's recap on some things that I've done for my own enjoyment.

Wait... I actually have to think about these:

- Read Jurassic Park (seriously, read it) and One Second After (again, read it). Currently reading Cress from the Cinder series.

- Watched Orange is the New Black season 3 in 2 days. Kind of disappointed, but after season 2 there was a lot of living up that season 3 had to do, so my expectations were really high.

- Continuing to watch Grey's Anatomy. I restarted the binge-watching right before school ended and I'm only almost done with season 6. Grey's used to be our show to watch as we waited for everyone to come over before we went out on Thursdays. During commercial breaks, we'd run downstairs to let people into our dorm building. Ah, the days.

- Continuing to watch Entourage with The Boyfriend. When the movie came out, he suggested that we start watching it because we prematurely ended How I Met Your Mother and Arrested Development (oh, how those shows fell off in their last seasons). Now, I'm hooked. Currently on season 4.

- Saw Jurassic World, which inspired me to read the book that started it all.

- Laid by the pool... but seriously, it's been so cloudy/rainy that I haven't had much time over there at all.

- Worked on my fitness. Because "Oh My Quad, Becky Look At Her Squat."

I refuse to count down the days until school starts (who does that?!), but I can't lie that I've been waking up in an anxious cold sweat about what the school year will bring. All I know that is coming is CHANGE.