Another kind of teaching

Andy Hall:

In the Lone Rock classroom of elementary teacher Lisa Bowen, hand puppets were all the rage last week. Study them. Borrow six from a library. Write a play. Perform.

The scene was quite different in another elementary classroom in the River Valley School District, where teacher Mike McDermott placed homemade yellow Post-it checklists on students ' assignments to help them assess the fluency of their writing. Oh, and the room in Plain Elementary contained a lean-to of 12-foot trees -- a representation of a scene in a novel being read by students.

In River Valley High School in Spring Green, echoes of the Holocaust and warnings that it could happen again filled a line of display cases -- a project that brought together regular and special education students from several classes throughout the school.

"Overall, we 're just really lucky, " sophomore Rakelle Noble said as she and five classmates reflected upon recent examinations of the Holocaust and teenage health issues such as eating disorders and self-cutting.

"We have a lot of things other kids don 't get to experience. "

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 2, 2008 3:11 AM
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