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Adriana

Lessons in Unlikely Places

Apr 242012

One of the reasons my life took a turn down the Elementary Education path is that I never outgrew my love for kid stuff. I wear Lego earrings and play video games, I still get kid-level excitement walking into a toy store; but most of all I love cartoons.

Sitting down to write this post, one particular cartoon sprang to mind. A Nickelodeon show, The Legend of Korra, premiered last week. It’s set in a world where people can harness the power of the four elements: earth, fire, air and water. Our hero, Korra, has mastered three of the four, and in the series premiere she goes to find a master to teach her Airbending.

Korra reminds me of most of the kids in my 2^nd grade class. She is impulsive, compassionate and confident. She can’t sit still and is easily bored, thus she tends to get into a lot of trouble. Her teacher is a spiritual old man, well-respected and experienced in guiding young people through to mastery, but he cannot handle Korra. She can’t sit still long enough to meditate, she destroys most of the training equipment because she loses first her patience and then her temper, and she repeatedly disobeys his commands.

Finding Creativity: Toilet Poems

Youth Education

Feb 222012

Let me tell you a story about one particular boy in my 2^nd grade class. He only recently began really trying to speak in English and he has a passionate dislike for reading and writing in it. His writing, in particular, is far below level. Writing conferences with him were like pulling teeth; he claimed he had no ideas and would not work independently. Every answer out of his mouth was “I don’t know.”

Fast forward to our current poetry unit. The big idea of this unit is that poetry can be just about anything you want it to be, and I encourage students to write about whatever piques their interest. We even made tiny, origami Idea Notebooks they could keep in their pockets for those random moments of inspiration.

We read some Shel Silverstein one day in a lesson meant to push kids to think outside the box and produce some good, old-fashioned absurdity. This boy started by writing a silly poem about a toilet. He initially wouldn’t let me read it, and giggled as I crouched down to read over his shoulder, sure that I would admonish him for the inappropriate topic. But instead I laughed.

Introducing Our Newest Guest Blogger Adriana Rewald

Soccer and Education

Feb 202012

I am a first year Elementary teacher working at a small international school in Poland. I have also lived and worked in Michigan and South Korea and as the years roll on I hope to add more countries to that list! Fresh out of grad school, bright eyed and idealistic, I want to help kids learn to love learning, inspire them to create, and realize their own potential.

I dabbled in Education for years before I ever started considering it as a serious career. I had a BA in Creative Writing that looks pretty and sounds nice, but the relevant career paths proved to be a bit too intangible for me. With no other prospects, I took a job in Seoul teaching kindergarten English.