Dream Fearlessly, in the words of Mr. Max (part 2)

Day one…

8th grade at the summit!

Day two was rafting day and after a blistering and sticky day of moving luggage and setting up tents it was surprising that some of our eighth graders were afraid of getting a little wet. Rafting can strike a little fear in anyone of any age. It’s a risk. But as was the case the day before, our eighth graders quickly got into the groove. After the first couple of bumps, some silly stories from our awesome rafting guides and a few “out-of-raft” experiences, they were fighting to ride the bull (sit at the very front of the boat). They were no longer afraid of getting wet but were getting just as wet from their splashing battles. It was truly another great, yet cooler, day for the eighth grade.

It’s funny how trips seem to culminate in strange and unplanned ways. First, the eighth grade persevered through an activity they had some experience with and would not accept second rate results. Then on day two, they tried something new and found that although risky, rafting was a smart risk, one that was well thought out and was way more rewarding then it was dangerous. On the third day however, the eighth grade faced a slightly less grand but all the more telling trial. Like professionals, they hiked up to a natural water slide. Spanning some 50 feet, Sliding Rock is a beautiful sight and awesome ride, that is, if you have the will to plop yourself on the slide’s 50 degree Fahrenheit rushing water. Unlike the group activities of the first two days, each student had the choice to individually participate today. They could go for it and possibly enjoy themselves or stand by without disappointing anyone. The most adventurous of the bunch did indeed plop themselves down in the chilly waters and slid down the slanted waterfall with trepidation. Soon, most had done the run at least once yet there were a few holding back. Running on the enthusiasm of her peers, I remember Jalissa sliding down the rock with thundering energy only to rival the rain that serendipitously began immediate after we left for the buses.

Our kids were really hungry, driven, that day. As they were heading down that water, they were sliding, but I feel that they also really felt like they were moving to new places of possibility. I know that last week was a fulfillment of dreams for many of the teachers and I hope that it inspired some new ones for our students. I hope they realize that their next trailhead is really only one fearless step away.

-Mr. Max

Dream Fearlessly, in the words of Mr. Max (part 1)

If mountains are a metaphor for life according to Mr. Weaver and running is a metaphor for life according to Mr. Chris, then it doesn’t surprise me that running up mountains was heavenly for the 8th grade.  Last week, the 8th grade pushed the envelope again by embarking on a three day, two night excursion into North Carolina’s wilderness.  Like any true experience in the great outdoors, two things marked our journey in particular.  Hunger and movement.  These two basic tenets of survival were indeed in place in their expected form, however, we were hungry and moved in ways unprecedented for the 8th grade this summer.

We began our expedition with gusto, a three mile hike which if summited would place us at the highest point in all of Pisgah National Forest.  Like true Student U veterans, our eighth graders belted out round after round of “Joy to the World” as they meandered the steep assent to our goal, Black Balsam.  After numerous questions about snakes and a few well-deserved water breaks, we reached the top…well, the top of something. Unfortunately for our exhausted eighth graders (and teachers) it was not the top we had set our mind to.  The true peak of Black Balsam laid in the horizon a good half-mile from this plateau.  Our eighth graders (and teachers) however would not settle with half-finished aspirations and we pushed on.  While the terrain steepened, we were soon glad we had continued for the sights became only more breathtaking.  Before we knew it, we where there, at the top of our world.  While some headed back down the trail to cheer on those still completing the assent, other students opened up congratulating letters from teachers and family.  Staring off that peak I was struck with the thought of how impossible this climb must have seemed for some of our students and just how much possibility now lay at their feet.  So many places to see.  So many people to meet.  Their parents knew that they could make it and now so did they.

-Mr. Max

To be continued… Check in tomorrow to read about the exciting adventures of Day 2 and 3 for our eighth graders last week.

Dream Fearlessly, in the words of Ms. Emma

Standing in the sand with the waves quickly approaching my feet, I looked out upon the ocean and could see nothing but endless water in the distance. This Friday at Student U, the sixth graders traveled to Bald Head Island. For many students, this was not only there first time on a boat, the ferry ride from the mainland to the island, but it was also their first time at a beach. Tour guides from Bald Head’s Conservancy lead us through the maritime forest and took us out on the beach, where we saw sea turtle nests. While those experiences were amazing, the memory of watching my students run and splash in the ocean will stick with me forever. Pure and simple joy was on everyone’s faces. Together we all just played in the water; no one was concerned with students sitting quietly at their desk, or participating in a discussion, or ensuring that everyone tries the vegetables. It was just Student U having so much fun together. I learned more about my students that day than I had the previous five weeks together with them. Every student here this summer is such a blessing to our program, and that was reinforced to me while playing in the ocean. This Bald Head trip taught me many things, but most importantly it reminded me that as teachers at Student U we must always remember to dream dreams as large as the ocean for our students.

-Ms. Emma, Family 6C

Check out photos of our 6th grade islanders at Bald Head from Ms. Emma and Ms. Alex!

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Discover your Best Self, in the words of Mr. Jacob

As a teacher at Student U, I’m guaranteed to leave campus worn out, but also often satisfied with what my students accomplished in class, taught each other and taught me.  But it’s also true that I sometimes leave feeling less than my “best self” and burdened by imperfections and my students’ unclear conclusions to the day’s experiment.

To be honest, I left a majority of the days this week with the latter of these two feelings.  In preparing for Science Share, I sensed my eighth grade students were behind schedule for completing their experiments on time.  I felt they weren’t completely displaying their understanding of the concepts.  If you’ve noticed something in this post so far, I hope that it’s the use of a certain pronoun, “I”.  I’ve used it entirely too much (seven total).  And then I (once more) realized as my students were presenting on Thursday night that they did understand everything that I threw at them the past 3 weeks.

They took ownership of the opportunity to explore density and ran with it.  Rebeca explained to numerous curious groups of people how the density of a liquid determines whether a raw egg sinks or floats, while leading a demonstration, in English AND Spanish.  She captivated the crowd despite the absence her partner, Leslie, not being able to make it back from an open house at her school.  Luis and Ti-vianna displayed their understanding of buoyancy by building tin foil boats and loading them with marbles to see how much weight they could hold in different liquids.  And Malik accurately described how he and Bryan found the density of various liquids and predicted the order of a density column.

“Discovering my best self” this week did not involve my own increased effort into lesson planning or working extra hard to engage with my students, but instead by giving them an outlet to show off their best stuff.

-Mr. Jacob Martin

Discover Your Best Self, in the words of Ms. Lauren

Sixth grader Miyah with Ms. Lauren

Our theme here at Student U for week four was very appropriately Discover Your Best Self.  Week four is a challenging week.  The students have settled in and are starting (or continuing) to test you, teachers are struggling to maintain their energy from the first three weeks, and things have started to get complacent.  This week more than ever it is important to do some soul searching and truly discover our brilliance both for teachers and students.  Although challenging, I truly believe this week I have discovered some of the best in myself and my students, even if it was only in the littlest of ways.

This summer, the English curriculum has focused on something called Word Study.  Each morning, the students learn a new prefix or suffix, its meaning, and are given four to six words in which it is used.  By the fourth week, my students were pretty quick to let me know that they knew the routine.  We circle the prefix (or suffix), underline the base word, and write the part of speech on top of the word.  But amidst the moans of “did that already” or “we KNOW Ms. Lauren,” I truly heard some of my students’ best self-discovery this week.

One of the most challenging aspects of Word Study for my students was coming up with defining sentences that explain what a word means without using that word (or some form of it) in the sentence.  It can truly be a difficult skill to master, especially when using words such as ‘antiviral’ or ‘deregulate.’  But my heart beamed this week when my students’ hands shot up in the air even before I asked them to let me hear some of their brilliant sentences.  Countless sentences defining ‘dramatic,’ ‘antisocial,’ and ‘defrost’ helped me to know that as a teacher, I was helping my students discover the definition-sentence-making part of their best selves.

And when one student asked “Why are you so excited Ms. Lauren?” after I had heard his sentence, I simply replied, “Because you get it.”  They got it.  And I got it too.  That discovering your best self isn’t just finding the best part of yourself, but as Ms. Bettina shared this morning in Meet and Greet, “when we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.”

-Ms. Lauren

Respect Yourself and Others, in the words of Ms. Michelle

OH BOY! This core value is of great importance and can be portrayed in so many different ways.  I could tell you guys about the awesome teachers in family 8A and how we work so well together because of the huge amount of respect we have for each other’s amazing abilities.  I could even tell you about this amazingly bright student, Leslie, who barely says a word in class but carries a presence that draws her peers to her calming spirit and a smile that constantly motivates her teachers to help her achieve greatness.  But for now, I will settle with telling you about an exceptional group of students instructed to attend my show choir class for the past three weeks.

I was blessed with the opportunity of teaching two eighth graders and eight sixth and seventh graders for show choir.  While brainstorming for my lessons, Mr. Joe told me that I should waste no time creating a safe environment for my students because it will be tough for some of them to sing in front of an audience.  When I thought about a safe environment, the first thing that came to mind was RESPECT.  So for the first week of show choir we spent the entire period, working on exercises that foster the idea of respect. Each student was instructed to pay a compliment to their peers and required to clap after EVERY performance.  After multiple opportunities to practice, this form of respect became a natural response for each student in class.  This was a great accomplishment for our class, but it became even more rewarding when my students began complimenting themselves as notes were sang in the right key and dance moves were performed with perfection.  After the second week, I had to implement the “raise your hand” rule because my students were giving so much input, they began talking over each other. Although I’m just brushing the surface of this experience with these wonderful students, I think this one note of progression concerning their interaction with each other shows how our students, and even us as teachers, continue to learn to embody the theme of RESPECT OURSELVES AND OTHERS.

-Ms. Michelle

Click here to watch a video of Ms. Michelle’s show choir performing at Meet and Greet two weeks ago! Stay tuned for a video of their incredible final performance from Friday.

Respect Yourself and Others, according to Ms. Mary

Every week at Student U we focus on one value that not only keeps our program in place, but also provides our students with a moral code that will serve as their primary tool for academic and lifetime success. While it is tempting to envision these core values as the six “pillars” of Student U, I would like to argue that one of the values must be considered the foundation upon which the remaining five pillars stand. That one value is respect. The members of the Student U community have learned this week that without respect for ourselves and others, it is very difficult to energize our community, to achieve greatness, to discover our best selves, to dream fearlessly, and to share our brilliance. How can we build a beloved community if we do not love and appreciate ourselves and the people who surround us?

Our students have learned that respect can be shown in many ways, shapes, and forms. In the classroom, our students show respect by listening when others are speaking. They have learned that respect can also be demonstrated by being considerate of other’s opinions and allowing these opinions to be shared even if we disagree with them. In terms of student-teacher relationships, our students are aware that following directions and completing assignments are ways to show their teachers respect.

On Friday, Family 8A traveled to the Carolina Tiger Rescue wildlife sanctuary in Pittsboro, NC. This family field trip allowed our students to see that respect can take a completely different form outside of the classroom. Our students arrived at CTR with little knowledge about the organization other than that its mission is to rescue and take care of wildcats. At the beginning of this week, each student was assigned a tiger for which he or she would be responsible for sharing some information during the visit. While each student may have been able to share a fact or two about a specific tiger before we arrived, it was not until we saw these tigers face to face that they truly connected with each tiger’s story. Many of the tigers we saw were abused as cubs or abandoned by their owners after getting too big or becoming too violent (a trait that is quite natural for animals such as these). In other words, these tigers were victims of disrespect. The love and care that our CTR guides gave the wildcats at each stop on the tour was evidence that CTR’s foundation must also be respect. Throughout our visit, it was emphasized that the wildcats at CTR deserve to live a life as similar as possible to the one they would have lived if they were still in the wild. CTR achieves this vision by showing their animals respect. They feed their animals the food they like (such as raw meat for tigers and bananas for binturongs) and design their spacious sanctuaries to be as close to a natural habitat as possible.

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Our students left CTR with a new definition of respect to add to their moral codes. I cannot wait to see the numerous ways in which this important value will continue to take shape throughout the rest of this program and the rest of their amazing lives.

-Ms. Mary

Achieve Greatness, in the words of Ms. Kathy

Student U has altered my definition of greatness.  As a history major, I have always considered greatness as a word used only for kings, presidents, philosophers, and Coach K.  During my time thus far at Student U, my definition has changed, and I realize that greatness is not a term used to describe goal-oriented successes.  What I mean is that Student U has taught me to enjoy the process.   Every day is a totally new adventure.  Even though I taught this same lesson on the Darfur genocide and human rights, my two classes had TOTALLY interpretations of the material.  In both classes, I asked the students to pretend to be rulers and come up with at least 3 universal human rights that would exist in their own world, this was all before I gave them a hand out of the actual Universal Declaration of Human Rights.   Below is a list of a few ideas that they came up with:

Everyone has the right to go to college.

Everyone has the right to be themselves.

Everyone has the right to be heard if they have a problem.

Everyone has the right to be happy.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in that world?  Their list of human rights was more powerful than the actual Declaration.   Those rights illustrate the greatness of our students and what they want to achieve in their lifetime.  I look forward to hearing more of their awe-inspiring thoughts about how to change the world.

-Ms. Kathy

Achieve Greatness, in the words of Ms. Samantha

What is greatness and how do you achieve it is a question that I have asked myself over and over again the past week. I have come to the conclusion that one has truly achieved greatness when they step out of the box and go above and beyond what they are required to do. I have seen this all over the Student U community since the students came to Student U on June 20, 2011. The first week was a little slow, and many students sat silently in my classes including my elective but this week I have seen a complete 180 in my students. One student stands out when I think of greatness. Madison, a 7th grader who is in my modeling elective, she has major confidence in herself but never puts anyone down. At the end of each class we talk about what we have done wrong or feel we can grow in and state one thing we think others have done well. Madison is always the first to talk and has such empowering things to say to other. It makes me happy and shows how great she is. In addition to Madison I have seen greatness in another student, Jalissa. When she started my class on June 20th she did not say much but with the tools that I have given her she has come out of her shell and is starting to become the model that I know she can be. The comments that Madison has made to Jalissa, in addition to the talks I have had with Jalissa have helped Jalissa she that she is truly great. I didn’t come into my elective saying that I wanted my students to be the best models but that I wanted them to see greatness within themselves.

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Madison is a perfect example of the quote, “In order to be truly great one must stand with others and not above them”; she chooses not to talk about her classmates but to build their confidence by showing her the great things within herself, and for that I am truly grateful.

-Ms. Samantha

Energize your Community, in the words of Mr. Jacob

Last week was energize your community. I want to tell everyone a story about what we’re about here at Student U, and probably my favorite of our core values: ENERGIZE YOUR COMMUNITY!

We are really lucky this year to be able to have a whole period dedicated to reading. Students are in classes of 2-6 people for this literacy period. My group and I are absolutely loving our time together after lunch. It is very relaxed, but we are getting energized over this great story of Ponyboy in The Outsiders figuring out who he is.

One student, Giselle said something that energized me all week. She said, “At the beginning I know I said I didn’t like reading very much, but I’m really liking this story and how we are reading it.” Major snaps to Giselle because now she is the one who reads ahead of the class and when we are reading in groups, she asks if she can read alone because she is so engaged in the book!

Mr. Jacob and his reading group

I am so proud to be in Giselle’s literacy group and to have seen the transformation of what a great story can do to whet the appetite of a young reader who thought she didn’t like reading. This is the perfect example of our theme for last week: Giselle opened herself up to being excited and pumped up about reading, and she found an amazing book that she now enjoys reading.

-Jacob Newbauer