Student Initiative

I am very impressed by how students can sometimes take initiative to start a new experience for themselves in school.  There were some boys who thought up a new enrichment class at our school a few weeks ago.  They found some dance videos on youtube, and wanted to find a teacher to help them, or dance with them to these videos.  They went around to all the enrichment teachers in our school and asked for their help.  There were certain days they needed, and when they came to several of us, we had to say "no" as we already teach an enrichment class during those times.  However, in the end, they found teachers to help them with their endeavor.

Here is where it gets interesting.  On the first day of what they believed should be their new enrichment, they had the teacher find a room, and take them all there.  The fascinating part is, neither the teacher of the enrichment, nor the administrator seemed to understand how important it might be for them to know how it was that the students were actually "free" and "available" to be in this new enrichment class.  The fact of the matter was that they are NOT "free" or "available" at that time for this enrichment.  They are supposed to be in other enrichment classes.

 In fact, several of them have been in MY enrichment class for the past few weeks, and I thought I was doing some interesting activities with them, building on skills that we would use later in the quarter to do some acting and development of characters.  The students never came to me to say they wished to leave my enrichment.  The teachers never came to me to mention or ask about these students switching enrichments in the middle of the quarter.  These students just DIDN'T SHOW UP FOR MY CLASS!!  What are we trying to teach these students?  I am responsible for them, so why is this ok?  Students in my class went down to try to find them, and they told them they didn't have to come back to my class..again, what are we teaching these students??  And what is enrichment??

Finally, I have to say, that I still appreciate their efforts and their initiative, but it is essential that students are taught the correct way to go about starting something new in a school.  And can I just say that COMMUNICATION  to all the important parties is probably more important than ANYTHING ELSE THAT ANYONE CAN THINK ABOUT DOING.  I hope this can be a teachable moment for all involved, and I hope we can come away with a better feeling about it all in the end.  Have a great week everyone, and enjoy all the enrichments, tlts, advisories, extra curricular activities, and all the commitments that you have made this year!!