Lemonade Stand - 1

Tomorrow is our lemonade stand day - yikes! My third period class has come along and gotten a little more involved. They came up with the idea of selling T-shirts and decorating the lobby of the school. We didn't sell the Tees to make money -just to have some fun way of identifying ourselve and a way to have a long-term reminder of our project. I came up with the basic design, based on the Alex Tees, and one of the girls tweaked it using PhotoShop. Wow! She is soooo creative! I think they turned out great! The shirts are yellow and we created an iron-on transfer design for the front. Some of the students stayed later to decorate their shirts with puffy paint - three of them wrote: My 4-20 plans are better than yours! I'm raising money to find a cure for cancer! How refreshing to see students take a stand to make a difference!

We have spent this past week baking in the Foods Lab. I got some great photos of the students working together. Today the students were all supposed to be job shadowing somewhere, but 24 of them came to school to finalize preparations. No, we didn't go anywhere and learn about what someone does while they're at work, but they learned about how to start up a business and what all goes into preparing for opening day! We messed up the printing of the transfers and ruined half a dozen of them, so we talked about how that impacts cost. The same for some of the cookies that didn't quite turn out like we had hoped.

I'm watching the news and it is supposed to be 70 and sunny! Yay!

Today I could see some of the kids really taking ownership of this project and that's cool. I know that the evening paper is sending someone to take photos tomorrow. I'm hoping that the TV media will take some video - they will be here to cover the track meet, so hopefully they will do both!

On a different note....I announced to my colleagues that I am leaving to move to another school next year. I am very excited and nervous at the same time. This move will allow me to teach only French in a 9-12 building instead of a 7-12 building. The new school is much closer to my home, which means I will spend 15 minutes getting to school instead of 30. I will put 8.5 miles on my car instead of 19. As gas prices only go higher, my transportation costs will go lower and I am looking forward to that. It was a very difficut decision for me to make, but I believe it is the right one in the long run.

Lemonade Stand Update

I introduced our project by having my classes watch the first episode of this season's "The Apprentice". The students discussed what they learned from watching it. They decided that teamwork and cooperation were important to accomplishing their task. They also said that marketing was important to the success of the project. Each of my classes chose someone to be the project manager and the students divided into three teams: donations, supplies, and marketing. I have to say that there is a major difference in the attitudes of the two classes. My first period class comes in and gets right down to business. They have accomplished a great deal in a short amount of time. This class is full of go-getters. Most of them are pretty goal-oriented and they are making this work. On the other hand, my third period class is getting really good at not doing much of anything. It's like pulling teeth to get them to plan or make a decision. It would be ideal if I could have all of the students meet together, but that's not a possibility, so they work as "separate but equal" teams....and we all know how well that turned out! One area where my third period class has shone - collecting funds to use as "seed" money. Yesterday one of my senior guys collected $94 from our junior high students....OK, coersion was involved, along with some intimidation, but it worked! Our high school kids only coughed up another $50 and there are twice as many high school students as junior high students! We're getting ready for Spring Break, so we're taking a week off, but then when we come back we'll be hitting this full stride!

Project-based Learning

As a school district, teachers have attended several in-services over the past year and a half dealing with Project-based learning. I am required to do two PBLs this school year. My first project was quite lame - in actuality, it was an activity instead of a true project. However, my second PBL has me excited and, at the same time, nervous! My Econ students are participating in "Alex's Virtual Lemonade Stand". They are going to be raising money for pediatric cancer research. I tend to be a control freak and quite anal about things, so this has been a struggle for me to let go, but I want this to be a true project and in order for that to happen, my students have to be responsible for all aspects of this event. I know how I would like them to do things, but I've got to let them explore and be creative. I'm not sure how much they'll actually learn about Econ - like fiscal policy and the Fed - but I think they'll learn a great deal about themselves and hopefully be able to make someone else's day a little bit brighter in the meantime. I'll let you know how it's going.
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