There’s a scene near the beginning of Huckleberry Finn where an old sinner talks of the joy of going to church, telling a particularly salacious tale, feeling good about the confession, but even better about the new suit and the cup of change.

Our students have an amazing command of the emotional language around completing projects. They can talk in clever and important ways about their final products and the work process. They’ve internalized the language of our place in cool ways.

Yet many stand up and use this language as they describe how little they got done. Any human willing to stand up and be held accountable deserves praise; how, though, do we take the rhetoric of change — “I need to focus” or “I can’t let myself get distracted” — and turn it into changed behavior? How might this exhibition process fuel the development of checklists or pathways or timelines that students can actually use?

As teachers, particularly exhausted teachers, particularly exhausted end-of-the-year-I-just-want-to-cook-big-breakfasts-garden-and-read-novels teachers, it’s hard to keep track of some of these individual claims.

Idea one: Can I distill three of their claims for themselves into tweets that we use as measuring sticks? Perhaps in their trackers? As circle activities? Could I print these claims and then laminate them? Could I have them begin their opening project with these claims?

Idea two: Take all of these distilled claims and present them all to the new 11th grade advisories. As they develop the four words have them think about how these four words might address their identified areas of improvement?

More to come. I need to think more about this…