Return to School: Unmasking My Selves

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We've returned to school, having just completed week 1. There are some teaching years that hum with a strong sense of community and shared purpose. This feels like one of those years.

I have an ideal assignment, teaching science and history in a series of 8 large inquiry-based units to two groups of 6th grades, 14 in a class, all sweet and interested. As I've mentioned to several friends, this may never happen again in my career.

I'm teaming with a very strong teaching partner, Deb H, from Alberta, Canada. We match nicely, sharing similar views re pedagogy, complementing each other in style. We're supported by a full-time TA, Niassa, a veteran at ISD. A great team.

We began with a project that required a high level of trust, reflection, and creativity. Students worked in small teams to construct masks of each other using plaster gauze, a material I've much enjoyed messing with over the years. The base masks would serve as a canvas upon which students would share four aspects of their lives -- their home country and culture, their family, their personality (the public side and the private side), and their interests/hobbies.

Deb and I are pressing the kids to go deep in their reflections and expression, avoiding what is easy and superficial. The masks will hang in our classrooms yearlong, like museum pieces, in time for Open House next week, for all to see.

We're off and running in what promises to be a relatively relaxed, fun, memorable 6th grade school year.