You know what's totally not cool? Being a grown up.


Like most young children, I grew up thinking that grown ups were these almighty, all powerful, omnipotent beings. Being a grown up meant having freedom to do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.

My view of adulthood as a child.

Oh, but thank goodness I grew out of that silly notion by age 13.  I hit puberty, and knew everything about everything. Suddenly it became very clear  that adults were, like, totally LAME. Dude, they just don't get it.They just want everyone else to be as miserable and BORING as they are, man. Can you believe my Mom yelled at me for playing Zeppelin III too loud?? She totally doesn't get it at all.

My view of adulthood as a teenager.

 I grew out of that when I became an adult. Because it's so awesome to pay bills, go to bed at a reasonable hour, and... hey, HEY! Turn that music down!!! Are trying to get the cops called on us?

No, really. You need to turn that music down, kids. And get offa my lawn!!

I guess being a grown up is ok for a few reasons.  Very few. Actually, I only came up with  5.

1.  I can eat desert before dinner WHENEVER I WANT.
2. I don't have to clean my room if I don't want to.
3. I get to tell my kids all kinds of bogus exaggerations about how hard my childhood was (walking to school barefoot, uphill, 7 miles, in the snow...what? It totally snowed all the time in Atlanta back then).
4. A cold beer on a warm spring day.
5.


Ummmm...I forgot the 5th. Ok, 4 reasons.

You know what is totally cool, though? Being a kid. Especially if you are a Hirsch kid. Every day is a big, scary, exciting adventure. Some days are filled with frustrating big feelings, and some days you feel filled with light and discovery. It's constant growing, learning, changing. You struggle, struggle, struggle to understand something, and then *poof* the light bulb goes off and you get it! 

Georgia Power must've been wondering what the heck was going on over at 705 South Candler street  last week because there were light bulbs going off left and right in our room. It was truly marvelous to watch the kids explore, discover and learn from each other this week.  They produced beautiful music, created geometric art, discovered perseverance and self motivation, and wrote thoughts of comic gold.  All we, the teachers, provided were the tools. The students worked the magic all on their own.

Behold the power of the mighty child:

EXHIBIT A:

Tuesday morning I catch our resident rock star, Paul, stringing rubber bands around a plastic box top and strumming.

 "Hey, Paul," I say, "I have a bunch of shoe boxes in the closet. Remind me to show you how to make a box guitar later on."
Silly me. Like this child needs me to teach him anything about music.
30 minutes later, the kid has not only made the guitar, but is tuning it to perfection. This was not just a kiddie made box guitar; it was a fully functional, legitimate instrument. And not only has he made a guitar, but has captured the attention of the rest of the gang:

Music with Maggie this week totally rocked, shoebox guitar style. Check out the Hirsch band (yeah, Paul is playing guitar and drumming with his feet)

EXHIBIT B:

 "Look! Come here! Look what I've made!"  We look over and see Jakob at with 2 geoboards:

Hmmm..."What's that, Jake?" we wonder.
"Watch!" he slowly flips the boards and...

boom! He flips some more and...

Oliver watches from the side for a minute, and then grabs two boards and some rubber bands, inspired by Jakob's geometric feat. Jakob gives him some tips, and  Oliver discovers his own designs:

EXHIBIT C:

 "Ms. Amanda, we've been making these calendars forever. Do I have to keep working mine?"

This is the first really long term project we have asked the students to do this year. Having the stamina to see something like this through can be challenging. My ADD addled brain knows this well: the minute a task starts taking a little too long and feels a little too hard/boring, I flit off to something else more exciting and novel. But, we all have those tasks in life. The ones  that start to feel like they are never going to end; but they have to be finished.

Pictured above is our class calendar graph. When a child completes a month of their personal calendar, they get a sticker. We've slowly seen the squares on the chart fill up, until, hey, look! 2 children have finished theirs! This week the students were able to see the light at the end of the tunnel as they completed page after page with a renewed excitement and self motivation. For the first week since we started this project, we didn't have to ask "Do you think you should work a little bit on your calendar?" We actually had students ask if they could work on it (one even skipped running club to get a little extra done).

EXHIBIT D: 

Annabella discovered her mighty warrior self when we made magic shields in Norse myths. She also discovered her gift for comedy, as did the rest of our Viking warriors as they provided hilarious (and I do mean hilarious) thought bubbles for our gods, goddesses and otherworldly creatures and made wanted posters for some fiendish frost giants.

EXHIBIT E:

Paul, Tani and Annabella discovered that hard work and teamwork are important elements of belonging to a club. Here they proudly model their hard earned Running Club headbands:

 EXHIBIT F:

We're becoming such independent workers! We are learning what tools we need to help us focus and complete our "contract" assignments each morning.

Journal writing his journal using an outline:

Sequencing the story from beginning, middle, end.

Solving some seriously tricky math puzzlers:

Annabella measuring area

Bo finding the missing addends in number sentences

So, yeah, being a grown up: not so cool. Being a kid: way cool.



Don't forget! Conferences for our class will be held on Friday, April 19th. Go ahead and mark your calendars! Here's the schedule. If you need to swap with a family, please contact them and then let me know.

9:00 Tani
10:00 Jakob
11:00 Bo
1:00 Annabella
2:00 Oliver
3:00 Aidan
4:00 Paul