Success!

"Ms. L?" a student asked me on Monday, "Can you believe we have 8 weeks left?"

I couldn't believe it if I tried.  This has been an incredible year, and one of the fastest on record for me.  For one, I have amazing little communities--not classes. These are the students that, although disparate at the beginning of the year, have come together to make sure that everyone in the class, not just their friends, gets cake for their birthday or that one student, injured and out for weeks, got all the work he needed, complete with excellent explanations of the work we were doing, including complex grammar points.

So how were we going to close out the year?

I had promised my students that we would work on Mythology, after all of that hardcore work on grammar for the first 3 quarters.  However, I wanted to make it meaningful to them.  I have often seen Mythology taught by having students read stories and answer questions. 

So I made them the teachers. 

Once the students grasped the incredible scope of the project, they split into their groups and immediately got to work.  This project will take them through to the end of May, and perhaps beyond. 

I really wasn't sure what kind of feedback I would get, but I heard lots of "This is awesome!" and "This is the most epic project ever!"

This is not an easy project.  It requires them to really work, think, make handouts, tell stories, and engage their peers.  And they are loving it.  The students even commented that they couldn't wait to see what other groups were doing!

And I look back and realize that these disparate students, who were scared, underconfident, and unsure of how to think or why it needed to be done at the beginning of the year, and I am amazed that we got where we are! 

When my principal asked how my students got so far, I explained that they had become a community, not just disparate students who sometimes had other classes together, maybe. Community building is key to student success, or, honestly, anyone's success in school and beyond.

How do we build that community?  And how, in the face of the Factory, to we maintain it?