We’re in day four of converting our feature articles to short plays. Today I wanted them to start thinking about dialogue and how it fits the conflict of their play. I had them restate the conflict (I’ve done some version of this every day this week) and then we passed each other’s papers to write out lines that someone who was responding in a happy, sad, angry, or scared way might say.

We then had students work in groups of two and use these sheets to stage a scene. Each time they used a line from the page they had to make a specific gesture (waving the paper) to show that it was a line from the paper.

Turning up the heat in two parts (one take a movie, identify the central conflict, then explain the ways the director turned up the heat on the conflict, then identify the climax, and the resolution. We then took this frame and applied it to our plays.

Two examples:

(There are three plays on what happens to kids and communities when a school closes).

This is going to be a great play! Two characters played by the same actor, each dealing with standardized tests but in different settings, one urban, one suburban.

Here’s the processing sheet:

Still working our way through the Power of Habit and I’m tying various circle activities to this text. Today I brought back the of visualization, asking them to draw/write their project as an immense success.

With the drawing concluded, we passed the paper to the next person who wrote out potential routines someone could build to reach this level of success.

Then we passed and asked some ways that the person will feel good when they finish the project.

Finally, we passed and asked them to list two things to think about to help them keep going.

We come back to time management over and over again. For my students it’s not really about time management, it’s about choices. Are you choosing to do the work or are your choosing to do something else? Are you choosing to revise your work or are you choosing to wait until the last day and then write it in one setting? Do you understand that feedback allows improvement or is revision a process of clicking “resolve comment.”

(I can’t get things to paste into the WP application right now so the picture will have to wait.)

Here was the prompt:

Humans.
They know they only have so much time.
They know good work takes lots of time.
They know they need to use their time well.
But they don’t always do so.

What helps you raise up?
What gets in your way?

If they’re all singing it, you may as well make it a circle activity. We did the drawing below and then had a conversation about what’s born and what’s made, what habits are given and what habits are created, what we inherit and we make for ourselves.

The conversation quickly turned to the ways in which we hold things simultaneously — I had written joy and pain (Rob Base) which the kids quickly noted was in the song we listened to next.

Tuesday’s circle I asked everybody to write motivational letters to themselves about how to finish this year strong. Here are the best lines:

“Remember that Uncle Spanky promised $20 for each A plus mom will kill me if we quack up for our last quarter.” –TC
“By the end of the year, I’m going to have my first episode finished.” –IJ
“Stay focused.” –KM
“Remember that you have someone looking up to you so if you mess up they will think it’s okay for them to mess up.” –MT
“You gonna finish up the year strong because you want your grades to go up.” –AH
“I expect my project to come to life and end up being a big program, even afterschool”
“I want to show people that if I can speak up they can speak up also.” –DD
“Think of the final product you will have at the end of the year.” BC
“If you don’t finish this project you are going to fail in life.” MH
“You will complete this project because you will make this world a better place.” HG
“By the time you read this, I will be dead. But keep your head up and keep pushing through the work” VG

The way you do things matters as much as what you’re trying to do. From Martin Luther King:

One of the great philosophical debates of history has been over the whole question of means and ends. And there have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that the means really aren’t important. The important thing is to get to the end, you see.

So, if you’re seeking to develop a just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means are really unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there? they may be violent, they may be untruthful means; they may even be unjust means to a just end. There have been those who have argued this throughout history. But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.

–Martin Luther King, Christmas Sermon, 1967

This morning we went down to a theatre to see a performance of monologues sponsored by Philadelphia Young Playwrights. Taliya Carter, one of our amazing students, had submitted an entry that was selected as a winner along with seventeen others.

There was a power in this performance. One, the willingness, really the courage, of students to grapple with complex, challenging events and emotions was on full display. Their creativity and thoughtfulness was truly amazing.

There was also power in the theatre, in the authenticity of the production, in the fact that this work flowed out of the hard work of high school students but it was staged in such a professional way.

All that to say I got to have this conversation with a student as we walked back to the subway:

“Do you think I could do that?”

That’s why we do this. We want students to see the world and to see a vision of the world and to see if they couldn’t create something themselves. If you’re asking that question of yourself, you’re probably going to be okay. If you’re in a school where kids are asking this question, your school is going in the right direction.