Listening to Cooper recite Slayer lyrics from "Raining Blood", Don speak towards his prior experience with the quilt project, Everett doing his famous Frank Martin impersonation or listening to Dixon talk about how to turn poetry into project based learning.  This, in my opinion, is the best part of the project.
     I listen to my wife talk about her day at work (working with adults all day) and it is much different than ours, not better just different. There are days where she would love to switch places with me but the truth is, we need more time to work with each other (adults) to look at what we are doing through another colleagues perspective.  Interacting with our colleagues has great value in understanding our students better, ourselves better, and helps us appreciate our team as a whole.  The feeling of being on my own little island up in the new wing is very real and stepping back onto the mainland and seeing the big picture that day was very refreshing. Having more interactions with our colleagues is not only essential to the success of our project, but more importantly it builds relationships, inspires us and frankly is a lot of fun.  We hear bits and pieces of what other staff members are doing and achieving but until you sit down and really collaborate with them, we really don't know how talented our staff really is.  I knew the group I was working with were all excellent educators but I got to see it first hand on this day.
     As far as the project goes, my initial thought was, "this is going to be easy".  I was brought back to teaching on the "TAG Team" at Grandview Middle and Martin City Middle where I had taught for 5 years and cross curricular projects were year long constants.  Alternative Energy would be the topic, ok lets go!  Not going to be that easy.  Several obstacles presented themselves immediately.  The first was timing, how can we integrate these projects so that they fit with one another within a specified time frame.  The second was having different cohorts of kids.  We don't teach to the same kids!  In my 7th grade science class it was always the same kids and tying concepts in from Mrs. Schultz class was easy, they all had Mrs. Shultz.  How is this going to work if we all teach different kids?  The third obstacle was; even though it seems easy for me to stray slightly from my curriculum, it would not be so easy for any teacher who would be judged by their scores on EOC exams.  2 weeks away from their curriculum would have a major impact on those scores. There were other issues as well, but those were the ones that stood out for me.
     The next step is to overcome obstacles.  Since our initial meeting, we all have been brainstorming around them and are looking at possible solutions.  One being that maybe the adult collaboration is more important than student outcomes and therefore not matching all of the kids up won't be such a big deal.  A possible solution to tested subjects could  be that EOC tested concepts could be intentionally put into all parts of the projects.  For example Don could show and teach me the benchmarks that his kids would be doing/missing and I could teach that concept as it pertains to hydrogen fuel cell efficiency or whatever concept I was teaching.  
    There is still a lot of discussion that needs to take place before we have a concept model in place that is flawless. I am looking forward to working through those problems with my colleagues and know that their talents and friendship will make it a fun process.
    This is the first blog I have ever written... Where the hell is the grammar check...

Leech