Today was a mess of testing. Testing marched into the school and demanded everyone’s attention. Whole large segments of school were trapped in classrooms with banks of laptops. And the others – those sophomores and juniors that were not testing – just for today – – they were rather locked up into classrooms for the “holding pen” experience.
All of this ended mid-afternoon and we were to go to our last class of he day. What to do? I could just let the day slide away – – after all there were only going to be with me for 35 minutes or so – or perhaps I could turn the sloth of today around and get something done. I decided to abandon the desk and rolling chair – and just decided to to clear the room save for a simple circle of chars in the center. The kids came in and were a bit surprised by the casualness of the moment. And what did I do? I just invited them to talk about the most recent play that we have read, The Wild Duck. I threw out a few questions to get the momentum rolling, but the discussion moved on without much effort from me. They welcomed a chance to talk about a play. Either they were so focused because they just love theatre and so appreciate Ibsen – or they were willing to do anything except WAIT and TEST. Either way we got a lot of Ibsen digested in 35 minutes!