I tweeted this earlier this week, but the back story bears more mentioning:
I had a student come busting into my seventh period prep a couple days ago.
“LS!!! We figured out how we can make our breast cancer run work!”
Umm, yes - I can work with this excitement!
This is a student who has not always been sold on the 20Time projects we are doing this year. Or on the changes I have made to my class this year. But man, was she excited in this moment.
What she’s dealing with is something I’ve started to see with other groups: as more and more kids are seeing the end of their projects in sight, the groups that need a place to hold their 20Time project have started to need to get facilities organized to hold these events. And then they run into roadblocks.
And I’m not helping them. At all.
It has been really rewarding to watch them start to deal with those hurdles. All proposals to use school space are getting rejected (the out of hand rejecting of student requests is another issue altogether). But then the kids have to go out and advocate for themselves, to make their ideas work within the larger schedule of the school. They go out and talk to the athletic director to organize using the gym for a three on three tournament. They talk to an administrator about using the little theater for their benefit concert.
You know: deal with the logistical red tape (for lack of a better word) that they need to do in order to hold their event. It’s this problem solving that has been rewarding to watch.
At times, the kids find it frustrating. Really frustrating. But to see breakthroughs happen? And legitimate excitement about solving these issues that have troubled them for a couple months? Yeah, that’s a 20Time #EduWin!
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