Change of Heart

I've expressed this in my posts lately, but I am really happy with my Practicum and that I'm in Mr. Scott's room. I've started to really connect to the students. Today was even better than yesterday in that respect.

I remember when I entered the education program, I was adamant that I wanted to teach high school. I had it in my mind that middle school students would drive me crazy for a variety of reasons. When I say that I was dead set on ONLY teaching high school, I really mean it. Over the last two or three years, I've slowly evolved but when people would ask me my ideal age group, I still replied high school. In a matter of a month, that has completely changed. Now I sort of question if I would want to teach high school after seeing how much fun teaching middle school can be.

I came to this realization today when I saw how excited and intrigued the students were. As I have mentioned before, the class is run as a game. The story behind the game is very in-depth and will require an entire post in the future to explain it in detail. Part of the game, though, is that a female individual sends us information and missions to complete through Schoology. We refer to her as the Patriot, and her identity is unknown. The Patriot helps us through our journey.

At first, so many students were skeptical regarding the Patriot. Is "she" really just Mr. Scott? Is it just the woman from the computer lab down the hallway? Maybe it's the Social Studies teacher from the floor above on a different team. Over the last couple of weeks - it's a total turn around. Today the Patriot sent a message with what appears to be code, and it ended with: "I must go. They are coming. Complete the challenge. Find me." "They" refers to the leaders of the Imperium, we believe, as she is helping us to find information which is strictly against the rules of the Imperium. The students loved it. They are questioning who the Patriot is. They were so excited to start working on the challenges. The second group in particular ran with it; one student kept urging the students at his table to hurry through the assignments so that they could find the Patriot. Unfortunately for him, the challenge they are completing is a research project that will take the better part of a week to complete.

Not every student is going to love the journey. I'm sure that there were students who are just going along and doing the assignments because they know that is the expectation. For so many students, though, this appears to be incredibly engaging and gives them an additional reason to complete their assignments. This enthusiasm makes me see why I want to teach. Furthermore, it's convincing me that I want to teach middle school rather than high school. I'm not saying that it isn't engaging for high school or that there isn't room for excitement in that classroom either. This month has just made me see the whole experience a bit differently and it has shown me that content can be guided in so many ways, not just because we have certain units to work through.