reflecting

First of all, I'd like to thank Carol for scheduling me to observe Wonderful Wetlands again. It was beneficial. It was a great wet day. One boy asked me how I knew what I knew while we dipped. I said I'm an engineer and came here to learn this for a year. His dad's an engineer, too. I heard two girls comment that Tom knew everything.
With the teaching schedule slowing down a bit, it's tough to reflect on specific days. Last week was Autumn Adventures on Tuesday, Creative Writing on Wednesday, Wetlands observation on Thursday and Enchanted Forest Saturday. These were distinctely different experiences.
I said in last weeks post, on Tuesday morning, that Autumn Adventures would be great because it had been in the past. Instead, there was a little disconnect. I felt like I was trying too hard at the stations and wasn't really achieving my intent - it felt less like experiential learning and more like passing information in different locations. I recognized that some of this was related to one or two disruptive students, and I did a few things to mitigate, but I didn't overcome the challenge in my 2 hours of stations. The hike was better. I love the insect nets! And the squirrels hid and found lots of corn. And one of the moms carried the frog we found back to the LC for us.
Creative writing brought me back to my world -- adult learning and teaching. I liked what Jennifer did in having us spend time "word harvesting" in an applicable environment. I think often about how what we do with EE and teaching K-12 can be beneficial in that other world. My post next week will reflect on this.... I am teaching 12 hours in Holland Michigan on Wed and Thursday.