For Kindergarten, 1st Grade, and 2nd Grade classes, we watched two movies during Guidance Class as testing was going on throughout the building. To celebrate and raise awareness about Earth Day, we watched Dr. Suess' "The Lorax." It makes it easy to teach the importance of the concept of Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling. It integrated humor too, of course, but definitely covered the value of taking care of the environment. As a closure to this movie, we had a discussion and filled out a worksheet on what we can do at this present time to help care for the earth. Rather than simply thinking "I won't cut down trees", I encouraged students to think of what they can do NOW. They came up with great answers including recycling, planting things (trees, flowers, vegetables, etc.), picking up trash off the sidewalk, and much more. I was impressed and proud that this fun movie could teach such a valuable concept.
After "The Lorax", we watched the movie "Lilo and Stitch." Yes, it is where my love for Stitch emerged, but it has such an important message about family!! Furthermore, it shows how family can mean different things for different people; a family can be mom, dad and kids, or, in Lilo and Nani's case, a family could be two sisters. Students began to volunteer examples of their own families to further encourage the notion that a family has such a broad meaning. It was great to see such collaboration and open-mindedness in our younger students at Washington-Lee. We finished with an "Ohana" worksheet that discussed our Washington-Lee Family. What an awesome movie!!
As the younger kids quietly watched these movies, our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders were hard at work completing their SOL's. I met with some individuals to talk a little extra about how to be successful as they took these tests, but spent a lot of time administering to individual and small groups. It is very hard--mentally-- to administer tests when you A) Encourage students while they are testing; B) Tell students to focus if they are distracted or off-task; and C) Give tips, such as suggesting them to check their work or work it out on their scratch paper. Nonetheless, giving the students a quick pep talk before they tested helped them persevere through the SOL test. And because of the amazing work of the teachers and students, Washington-Lee is fully accredited this year!! I am simply in awe of how much everyone has worked together to make sure our students receive the best education possible as faculty and staff fulfilled all documented and undocumented accommodations to ensure success during this stressful time. I am most definitely proud of the students as they persevered through the weeks of testing.
And now it's summer! I am finishing up Professional Development classes and cleaning up my classroom, and then will be teaching at B-180 at Van Pelt Elementary School. This will require early mornings but I am still excited to see a few kids from Washington-Lee, as well as meet new ones from the other elementary schools.
I hope you all can enjoy your summer and get lots of rest!! It's been an awesome two years of being the School Counselor of Washington-Lee, and I've absolutely loved it. :)