A brief, illustrative story: Once, my middle school held a contest to see
which homeroom could create the best door decorations for Christmas.
Not exact matches
As
homeroom mom for the past three years, I have it down to a science
which foods are SAFE so that every egg, nut and dairy allergic kid can enjoy classroom celebrations.
Students completed the snack forms in their
homerooms (a different setting from the one in
which they had received the treatment).
The logistics are challenging; we have six different buildings — it's kind of a community college design — with 84
homerooms, and some classes are upstairs,
which makes delivering to the classroom difficult.
All the
homerooms participated in a competition to «read their way up Mount Everest,» in
which students metaphorically climbed the mountain by reading books and magazine articles.
While working morning cafeteria duty, I realized that many students were coming to school as early as an hour before
homeroom began,
which gave me the idea to start enrichment clusters as a way to keep them engaged.
Instead of
homeroom, students have Tiger Talk, an introductory period during
which they greet each other using eye contact and handshakes, play games that encourage interaction, and discuss topics that range from their favorite places for quiet time (Douglas gets a shy laugh when she reveals that her place is the bathroom) to where the Mississippi River —
which flows past some students» backyards — really starts.
The growing trend in schools to have «college days» in
which faculty and staff wear college sweatshirts and
homerooms are named after colleges.
Add to that bus duty, hall duty,
homeroom, large groups of sometimes unruly students, minimal planning time, mountains of paperwork, and frequent assignments to subjects for
which they're unprepared, there's little time left to plan, create, and grow.
Data for the 9th grade assessment were organized by the 9th grade
homerooms in
which the students took the test rather than by the 10th grade English teachers» classrooms in
which the students were now enrolled.