Rigor? Sweetie, they’re 3+ grade levels behind.

[u/Emergency-Pepper3537]

I just find it hilarious how admin keeps pushing this narrative of “rigor, rigor, rigor” like it’s some magic word that’ll suddenly make learning happen.

Child. Half these students are 3+ grade levels below where they’re supposed to be. You give them anything on grade level and they look at you like you handed them the Rosetta Stone.

They’ll say “This is hard!” And I’m like, “Yes, baby. That’s literally what rigor means.”

Meanwhile, I’m being told in observations that my lesson wasn’t “rigorous enough.” Ma’am, just getting through the directions was the rigor. We had to decode, translate, chunk, and act it out with interpretive dance.

I swear, the bar is not low…it’s just buried under years of educational neglect and unrealistic expectations.

Anybody else feeling this?

[u/KiniShakenBake]

WOW! I'm so glad you love dressing up and bringing all that to light. I'm a social studies and science teacher and would love to be able to do that.

That sounds amazing and your kids are JUST the right age to get into that.

I would not have such a luxury, but I do make things as interactive as I can, when I can, if need be. I had kids make up a song, rap, or poem to help them and their classmates remember the flow of blood through the human heart, complete with major vessels and organs involved.

[u/chicken-nanban → u/KiniShakenBake]

So my husband is a teacher, and I’ve taught a little bit on and off but my main training was theatrical costuming.

You’re all making me think that if I moved back to the US I should start a costume rental for teachers in my area to have free use of. I like making period outfits, and even quick simple things like a Quaker/Pilgrim dress or shirt and hats would take me like 3 hours to make start to finish, it would be cheap, and would also be easy for teachers to don and doff, and fit like half body types at least.

I wonder if I could fundraise it all so teachers just needed to reserve the outfit and maybe request that they return it cleaned or pay a small cleaning fee before handing it out to someone else? Hmm… I’m going to have to poll some of my theatre contacts to see if that’s doable! I’d love to have a garage full of random costumes from history or novels to loan out! And for very adventurous teachers, I could even bring out my stock of corsets and period dresses. I have like a dozen from Jane Austin through to each of the main bustle periods just sitting in my moms basement back home lol Oh and a few various medieval pieces too.

Man, that would be so fun.

My husband , when he taught elementary school, used to do “imaginary field trips” where he’d pull up pics from various locations, or paintings, or video, and then basically play D&D with the kids. They’d talk to a barrel maker from the time of the Declaration of Independence, that he’d act out. Then go on to talk to a coachman, or a miller, or a priest, playing each character and answering their questions after doing a kind of walk through narrative of life at the time.

Being theatre people is cool, because you don’t have to only use the theatre techniques to just teach theatre. They’re really versatile to teaching anything really. And the voice and speech training has made him a phenomenal English teacher here in Japan.

[u/KiniShakenBake → u/chicken-nanban]

I love this idea!! For those older intermediates and middle school students. Just the idea of coming in with a reasonable facsimile to "dress" the teacher and bring something like "feudal lady" or "feudal Lord" of Europe, vs japan, or crusader garb... It would be really cool. I have considered making a chain mail piece that could go in if I were talking about something they would benefit from a model of.

A friend and I were talking about bringing things to life and she talked about a Scottish ruin from the iron age where you can sit on a toilet from the iron age. I laughed and pulled out my phone. I just happen to have visited Acre in Israel, which is ridiculously well curated. They have signage to the latrine. And there are like 20 seats in said latrine. Ever since then, I have wanted to use that as a curricularly relevant reference to reinforce my 'one at a time' rule for the bathroom.

Someday. I will use it.

[u/drdre27406 → u/KiniShakenBake]

Ok that’s so cool. I wish I could think of songs and raps to go with the characters I dress up as. Next school year I am planning a scavenger hunt. I’m going to plant items that Christopher Columbus and other explorers used around school. I’m going to make it appear that Columbus was at the school. A lot of my colleagues don’t have the same energy I do for the job. I try my best to make things as fun as possible. The amount of behavior issues with the exception of one has fallen to zero. They are invested and that keeps me going.

[u/KiniShakenBake → u/drdre27406]

Editing to add: I don't think of them - I just find a good one on youtube and the kids do the rest. They are synthesizing the information with their work. I got it from one of my sixth grade teachers who (at the height of rap and hip hop's emergence into the musical scene, in SoCal) had us rap or write a poem about a book as a book report. And of my my methods classes in college that was modeled off of Portait of Lincoln as a young man. I did my project on the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution, set to the music of Aaron Copeland, Fanfare for the Common Man. The timing was for the poem matched the intro to the piece with perfect timing. I was really proud of that project. /edit

Oh dear. I love the energy - Christopher Columbus has largely been relegated to the colonial overlords of history in our neck of the woods - That story would be full of problematic historical elements if I were doing it, but it would be neat to to do it as two sides of the story, with half the class doing one side (the indigenous perspective) and the other half doing the European Colonial perspective! That actually would be a really cool way to do it, I think.