I write to you today directly from my classroom. We have MontCAS testing today, and since teachers aren’t allowed to do anything beyond getting a kid another pencil, I’m left to sit and watch as my students meticulously fill in their bubbles. A familiar wave of thoughts and emotions has washed over me; I remember the frustration when I took Washington’s version, the WASL, when I was in grade school, and the disbelief when I found out how many times the MontCAS is administered. I think standardized tests are bogus, and I won’t say anything more on the topic.

They do, however, give teachers ample time to think and grade and write.

We’ve finished our Greek mythology pottery project, and the kids, overall, did a remarkable job. It’s refreshing to have them in big groups for an entire unit; they can practice cooperation, conflict resolution, dispersement of power, time management and self control in ways not possible when they work individually or with partners. It has also, on the other end, given me the chance to solve communication or behavior problems between students when they are unable to do it themselves, and I have remembered how truly fragile a kid can be.

The other main benefit of group work of this kinds is that it allows students to find their niche and perform in a way that’s easiest and best for them- I had a few jobs for artists, one for a writer, and a couple for people people. In a way, it was like a mini-experiment with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences.

For those that haven’t heard of it, Gardner’s theory of the Multiple Intelligences states, essentially, that there are eight different areas (at this point- it’s a pretty fluid theory) in which a person can be novice, expert, or somewhere between. Whereas we usually think of someone having a “gift” for music or numbers, Gardner credits this instead to the “several different intellectual strengths, or domains of intelligence -- each located in discrete parts of the brain; each responsible for a particular human ability; each relatively autonomous from other human faculties; and each progressing through Piagetian-like stages... at rates that are influenced not only by heredity but by cultural values,” (Olson 92). They are: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.

Through this project, I have been able to test out this theory, which I (truthfully) immediately bought into but never had to opportunity to try. As I said, however, it was but a mini-experiment, and because we had a highly condensed timeline for the project, there wasn’t much space for the kids to grow, so to speak. Most groups got the idea that they should pick the best drawer to be their artist, but some kids clearly chose a people-person role so they “wouldn’t have to do any work,” and others picked one job and ended up doing another. More work in this area would be both fun and rewarding.


In other news, in my constant attempt to appease the requirements for Indian Ed for All, I think the cleverest one I’ve seen was this morning in Math, to introduce the lesson on finding the circumference and area of a circle. Math seems to me the hardest subject to include an Indian Ed lesson, but Stacey dropped a Black Elk narrative about the importance of circles in his people’s traditions and practices! Boom!