I Wish My Teacher Knew...

Found Objects and Fresh Air - Welsey

I'm in my last year of high school in Canada (for those of you who don't know how it works here, it ends at grade 12 around ages 17-18 before going on to university/college/workplace). My experience is with both public and Catholic elementary schools (different school boards) and a fairly new Catholic high school. My high school is quite different from the nearby public schools (other Catholic schools are far) and what I hear about public high schools make me think that they are all "sketchy" or maybe it's because they are older. 

A while back, I heard about all extracurricular activities being banned or cancelled from a teacher's strike or something like that and I hope that the teacher's on Wattpad here aren't the type to be doing similar things (although I'm just a student and won't know your reasons for doing so and wouldn't understand). However, the result of this was the loss of community bonding clubs and after-school activities for the public schools that I feel are very significant in providing youth the chance to experience different things without being fully responsible/committed in a paying job right away in the workforce.

With my lack of transition skills, I move on to a completely different topic; field trips. Now we all know that most kids love field trips these days, but parents are always questioning about whether or not their children really need to go on these expensive trips. The schools nowadays are trying to find ways to make the trips less costly for the students and their parents to pay for by pitching in to pay a percent of the bus to the place, but eventually this probably won't work on the long term with the generous donations by the poor principals who weren't able to get the higher people in the school board to assist schools with this. 

Field trips don't always need to be far away, and can even be walking distance sometimes. Some teachers in my elementary schools used to bring our discussion times outside at a nearby park or the school playground/soccer field on good days. Sometimes this helps to clear out their brains of the rubbish air quality or the eye-tiring artificial lights from the classroom. Once, we wrote a letter as a class to Robert Munsch (an author of many popular children's books we were reading in class, you probably know him), and we all walked down to a mailbox near our school to mail it together. 

Little walks like this outdoors can both refresh the students’ minds and get a little blood circulation going after sitting at their desks all day. They're bound to start getting fidgety (elementary school) or tired (high school) halfway through the day so this is a way to "force" them to take a breath of fresh air plus a little exercise. Even if they complain about it, they probably actually like it or will appreciate it afterwards. For classes that are based on creativity, such as art, English, or even drama, a little walk outside could be useful as well for inspiration based on nature or observing pedestrians or even cars for the boys haha. 

On the topic of creativity and inspiration, (I'm pretty sure many teachers have already done this) bringing in objects for inspiration. Again, for art, English, and maybe drama class? You can bring in your own or encourage/tell students to bring in random objects to swap with their classmates or pick out of a box for inspiration for whatever project. Sometimes, teachers do something similar like writing words on little pieces of paper and letting them pick one out of a hat etc. I think this way is nice for students that are able to visualize the object, but sometimes kids with different styles or learning may have difficulty with this. Having a concrete object in their hand or to look at can really help them observe the detail in things. (E.g. practicing describing objects in English class with texture or the sounds you can make while using the object: apple, the texture, the sound of chomping eating, etc.) 

- Welsey @theawesomewasabi (Age 17)