Friday!

It's official!  We have the first week of school under our belts, and will have two weeks completed prior to Labor Day.  Granted, students were only with us for three of the five days, but the names are starting to match up with the faces, and the personalities are beginning to shine.

Given that I teach half-credit courses, I only see each class every OTHER day, so three classes have seen me twice, and two have seen me once.  We've had a day of learning to relax, focus, breathe, and focus a bit on thinking, and most of the classes have already worked as individuals or in small groups to practice their Analyzing Relationships skills, while creating something for me woefully bare walls.

For the Themes in Lit. folks, the first round of shared SCAMPER characters were presented.  A simple assignment -- identify a character owned by Disney, and work with two other people, and their characters to:

Substitute
Combine
Adapt
Modify
Put to other uses
Eliminate
Refine

and create a new character.  This assignment gives me a chance to watch kids get to know each other, readily identify the leaders, perfectionists, "I don't think I'm creative"s , and other personality traits and styles.  It's a BREATHE lesson, with a lot of thinking, laughter, and a first attempt to get back into the groove of creative thought and exploration.

So here are the candidates:

It was awesome to watch the process, and even more amazing to see high school students discover that they felt confident drawing -- especially since the assignment was about the PROCESS, not the perfection of the product. 

Next week, I get to do it two more times with the two other classes.

Meanwhile, the White Books already have entries in them, and the metacognition journey has begun.  Welcome to the 2015-16 school year.

(Oh, by the way, did you know that most of the kids in my freshman class were born BEFORE 9/11?  Talk about time-flying reality checks...)