It's Spring! What to do about the birds and the bees.

Remember when the school year began in late August?  Me neither.  That was a long time ago now-- a distant, hazy and vague memory. 

And for most young students, it can be as much as a lifetime ago.  Along with other changes, in their bodies, their relationships, their families, their understanding of themselves and the world--the weather now adds its special charm to the mix.  There is suddenly a new possibility looming, of summer, of sleep, of vacation... of anything except school!  They are looking forward more than any of us.

How natural.  How desirable.  How much fun to have the infinity of summer close at hand.

How hard to be stuck in school for six more weeks!!!!! 

And how much teachers need to adjust in order to capture the best from young people at this time of year. 

None of us--not teachers, not students--are immune to the special pleasures that earth and the seasons provide. Rather than closing our windows and our minds to reality, I heartily endorse going with the flow and finding new ways to capitalize on the inherent interests of kids and the magic stimulated in them, and us, by the natural world.

How?

Well, it depends on the age level, subject matter, school demographics, physical location and educational mission of your school.  In other words, as a teacher, you have to creatively, authentically, appropriately find ways to blend your lessons and pedagogy into the fabric of experience, human, biological and meteorological, that occurs at this time of year.

I have mostly taught English and Humanities at the secondary to post-secondary level, and so I will describe my approach thinking in terms of a typical suburban school in middle America. 

General Points for Handling "Springiness" in Classes

1.  Because of greater antsiness in students, classes need to be lighter, livelier, and contain more variety in activities, not less.  I try to move students through four to six different activities in an hour, allowing for lots of interaction in small groups, frequent return to large group discussion or presentation, some individual skill development, some content support, some learning games, etc.  But, Spring is not the time for lecture, or long movies or any kind of monolithic activity.  Keep things lively, keep them moving, keep kids active physically, mentally, emotionally as much as possible.

If you need a more thorough guide, you can't find a better one than Eric Jensen's, Enriching the Brain.  Here are his seven golden maximizers of healthy brain development:

• Plenty of physical activity and movement
• Novel, challenging and meaningful learning experiences
• Coherent complexity in lesson design
• Manageable stress levels
• Plenty of social support
• Good nutrition and adequate food and drink
• Sufficient time to complete tasks

Not all of these are practical or even possible in academic environments, but many of them are.  And, in case you have a curious principal or a prying parent, these are proven strategies for building the kind of neural pathways that lead to a healthy, well-functioning brain for all young people.

2.  Allow students to process their individual experiences, insights and feelings.  I will have them write about spring and what they like about it, even at the level of their senses.  I have them talk in small groups about their weekends and what positives flowed from what they did.  I have them plan what they would like to accomplish before school ends, continue to reflect on their goals and what they are learning about themselves.  In other words, I like to make sure that their classroom experience, to a large degree, feels relevant, insightful and connected to their overall life experience, especially their connection to life "outside" school.

This does not need to take a ton of time, and what you save in terms of less resistance and anti-social acting out is more than worth it.  It can be as simple as a three-minute "check-in" as a class warm-up, to a journal entry about their night at Prom, to a summative paper reflecting on how effectively they worked toward their academic and personal goals over the course of the school year.  But, classroom experiences should not seem or feel like endless drudgery to them or they will learn to hate it, and likely, to lose respect for you as their teacher.

3.  Try something completely new and different.  I like to have a spring field trip, something fun yet interesting and stimulating.  Kids love this.  Or, I will try a project, but one which involves student presentations taking place at stations around the room, like you would find at a conference or a fair.  I have sometimes combined my class with another class in a totally new space and initiated a super-large-group discussion about a special topic that fits the content or concern of both classes.  I have tried group singing--as a reward or as a closer to a class or day. 

There are literally no end to the possibilities: wrapping up a unit with a show-and-tell session, hosting a special foods exhibition, bringing in flowers or baby chicks, tracking bird migrations or floods, learning about weather phenomenon such as lightning or tornadoes.  Again, what "fits" for your class and situation only a teacher can assess, but none of these has to be large, time-consuming show-stoppers.  They can be little mind-expanding portals onto something new and interesting that have the important side-effect of getting kids stimulated and connected to their world--and interested to see what novel activities might happen tomorrow.

4.  Build toward "high meaning" events.  I am big on allowing for students to have meaningful exchanges and experiences at school.  The benefits that flow from this are significant, profound and endless.  And, there is nothing like the pending end of the school year to get kids to be reflective, generous and honest.   I like to structure my activities in the spring to lead inexorably toward what I call "high meaning" events:  a class period in which students get to express feelings and insight about their "whole" experience of being in class that year. 

Hopefully, as a teacher, I have built the kind of trust and community which can handle such sharing.  And then, I simply lead by taking a genuine risk myself, traveling through the semester or school year sharing around three topics:  a.  what I will most remember about the class;  b.  my funniest or most embarrassing moment;  c.  my wish going forward for each student. I share them honestly, with good humor, and an occasional show of emotion. Then I walk away, retreat to the back of the room and leave the stage open for whoever wants to go next and share on the same three topics.  Amazing but true: in 20 years, I have never had a student unwilling or unable to complete this end of the year sharing exercise.

At the very end of the final class, I have used the coolest activity.  We tape a blank page on our back and get twenty minutes to write something positive, funny or touching for each student.  I know this sounds corny, but really, when this works, it is one of the most incredible things.  You see, while you are busy writing on someone else's back, someone is writing on yours, etcetera, until there is this large train of kids in single file, writing on each other's back.  No one can see what is being written, and anyway, they don't care because they are busy composing their own thoughts.   It really is an amazing thing, especially when you are all finished and get to read what other students have written about you.  These sheets then become keepsakes.

Other years, I have staged an end of the year soccer match, boys versus girls or by picking captains and teams, followed by the cutting up of a large watermelon.  It's a great way to go out on the school year. 

And people, if the reason that you cannot do something like this is because there is some item of content that you have not yet imparted to students, I have to ask:  If it is so important, and you had so many hundreds of hours of instructional time to teach it and did not get it done, what were you thinking or waiting for? 

School, like life, is for the living; school should be as fully alive as anything we do.

I know the common wisdom of public education is that we should do less personal sharing, less talk about feelings, and make sure that kids do not stray beyond certain very narrow confines.  Under this scenario, school is about "work", about "standards", about increasing "achievement."

But, in my experience, if you establish a class climate of honesty and trust, then opening things up like this can be very profound, significant and authentic.  One that fortifies student interest in school and galvanizes their connection to learning as being personally meaningful.

With its new freedoms, new hope and new possibilities, Spring is a great time of year to get this kind of work done.

In the end, the job of teaching is more about allowing for discovery in students than it is in dictating what it is that they "must" learn.  At this time of year, when discovery can seem most profound, provocative and life-changing, the teacher's task is not to run from the body's restiveness, but to capitalize on it and promote paths where young people can find out more about themselves and their world than they ever thought possible.