Today the principal walked into my class and stood there just looking around for a couple of minutes. The 7th graders were at 4 different centers and everyone was on task. One group was developing a PowerPoint on a constellation that will be visible during their upcoming sleepover, one group was weighing, finding volume and calculating the density of various objects, one group was using the periodic table to answer questions about elements, and one group was watching a BrainPop video on the periodic table and completing a test on the video. I remember once when I was teaching 5th grade in about 1990 in a public school in Florida the principal popped into my room and stood there in silence for a couple of minutes while the kids worked at various centers. Later he spoke to me and said his first thought was the room was chaos until he started looking at each child and determining if they were on task. His rough calculation was that over 90% of the 32 kids in the class were on task. For this school which drew students largely from migrant farmworker families 90% was a good percentage of class involvement.
But today at the moment the principal entered it was perfection - 100% engaged and actively involved in their self-directed learning. I looked around and marveled at how sweet the moment was before going over and chatting with the principal. He was looking for a student who was in another class. He possibly didn't even notice the perfect moment.
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