Busting into the 21st Century!
After watching from the sidelines for quite awhile, I think I am ready for this blogging adventure. I was finally convinced when I starting thinking to myself, "If I had a blog, I would blog about that..." Maybe my first blog will turn off all those that hate teacher-talk and I will have uninterrupted privacy in cyber space!
Today at school, I had my students participate in a simulation called "Making Ends Meet" to wrap up our unit on the Great Depression. It is an activity where students are given a family's budget that is in the red and they have to find ways to pull the family out of a negative income situation. The real challenge is that the family is really poor and is living with only the essentials. The point is for the kids to see that they have to make really tough decisions and trade-offs that they would never think of to get the family back to a positive income. After the students find solutions they think are good ones, we discuss their ideas, and talk about the cycle of poverty.
This is a particularly interesting simulation to do with my very affluent students, especially on a day like Valentine's day, when they have lavish gifts sitting next to their desks on the floor. Many times I heard exclamations like, 'this is hard!' or 'that really sucks for them'. The best part was the disagreements this activity created, 'what are you heartless?', and 'they are still people, you know'. Our debrief was fantastic. Pin-drop silence met my question of "how would it feel for you to live like this?" The eventual responses were poetic coming from my students.
On days like today, with all the frivolity of St. Valentines, I am thankful for my upbringing. Not that having divorced parents was ever good, but I think the experience of having a single mother and an extremely budget conscious father was priceless for me. It is in class today that I remembered not trying out for the Nordic Ski Team in high school, because I was worried it would have been too expensive for my parents. And although, I live a life today that many would consider extremely comfortable, I try to always remember the difficult choices that are being made, day in and day out, by people next door, in the next neighborhood, or across the world.
Today at school, I had my students participate in a simulation called "Making Ends Meet" to wrap up our unit on the Great Depression. It is an activity where students are given a family's budget that is in the red and they have to find ways to pull the family out of a negative income situation. The real challenge is that the family is really poor and is living with only the essentials. The point is for the kids to see that they have to make really tough decisions and trade-offs that they would never think of to get the family back to a positive income. After the students find solutions they think are good ones, we discuss their ideas, and talk about the cycle of poverty.
This is a particularly interesting simulation to do with my very affluent students, especially on a day like Valentine's day, when they have lavish gifts sitting next to their desks on the floor. Many times I heard exclamations like, 'this is hard!' or 'that really sucks for them'. The best part was the disagreements this activity created, 'what are you heartless?', and 'they are still people, you know'. Our debrief was fantastic. Pin-drop silence met my question of "how would it feel for you to live like this?" The eventual responses were poetic coming from my students.
On days like today, with all the frivolity of St. Valentines, I am thankful for my upbringing. Not that having divorced parents was ever good, but I think the experience of having a single mother and an extremely budget conscious father was priceless for me. It is in class today that I remembered not trying out for the Nordic Ski Team in high school, because I was worried it would have been too expensive for my parents. And although, I live a life today that many would consider extremely comfortable, I try to always remember the difficult choices that are being made, day in and day out, by people next door, in the next neighborhood, or across the world.
posted by KLOU | 4:48 PM
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