Snow and Ice

So I chopped ice yesterday like a madman.  It felt great!  I love shoveling snow and cleaning up the property.  Then is snowed overnight.  Well, I am sore as hell.  My hips and knees hurt like hell as I walk.  And I knew that even with a delay, I couldn't get myself to work with how my joints are killing.  I have over 90 days banked, so I shouldn't feel guilty, but, as usual I do.  People talk about Catholic guilt?  My Catholic education has nothing on how my mother instilled guilty feelings in us kids.  You don't know guilt unless you have an Italian mother.....

So I am researching for a collaborative lesson.  I finally heard form a History teacher about planning a lesson together.  I didn't want to bother him because it is a crazy year.  I hate to pressure people.  But, we are doing a lesson on Civil War photography and linking it with my Photo III classes and their large format shoot.  While we will not be using the glass plates, the camera is the same.  So I am super excited to go over this.  And...

Last night PBS' Independent Lens aired "Looking Through a Lens Darkly".  This is a film about the representation of African-Americans in photographs and discusses the differences between how whites and blacks represented this population.  It was a bit scattered.....  But as I watched it, I realized this filmmaker was like me.  I feel like I have the fabulous ideas and big important lessons to get across.  When I present them, I feel a bit all over the place.  The kids look like they are a bit confused.  Then at the end, I tie it all together.  And  day or two later, the kids connect the dots.   We get tons of theses a-ha moments.

That's what I got laying in bed afterwards, thinking of the film.  All the information and thoughts running around in my head started to connect.  So do I try to make my introductory lessons more cohesive so they get it right away?  Or do I keep on going on as I do, naturally, reflecting my personality and let the kids connect the dots?  I don't know.  I like the idea of the students having ownership of the lesson by coming to connections and realizations themselves, but for observations, this is not good.  I also think if I lay it all out there neatly and concisely, I am feeding them too much.  There is no chance for explorations on the part of the students.  I prefer to do what is best for the kids.  Ugh.  Time to go research....