A Mixed Blessing

    Noble Academy, the Hmong charter school where I volunteer, has really grown.  When they were renting a building at 40th and Thomas in north Minneapolis space limited their enrollment to 800. Last year they moved to the new building they built in Brooklyn Park, just north of the village of Osseo.  Because they built for growth there were a number of empty rooms in the building.
    When I meet with my small group of students we leave their classroom and find a place where we can read audibly,  With all the empty rooms that was no problem last year.  Now the school has grown to a 1000 students and all the classrooms are occupied.  Therefore, I've gathered with my scholars at a table in the library.
    Meeting in the library has worked fairly well.  However, there are many times when entire classes come to use the library.  This has not distracted my students very much but with my compromised hearing, coupled with the student's soft voices, I often find it difficult to hear.
    This week my groups were moved into the library office and we can close the door.  Shutting out the noise was very helpful to me.  However,  the students behavior changed dramatically.  Suddenly they became all chatty.  While it is happy chatter it is a distraction from their task.
    We recently finished reading Yellow Fever; 1793, the same book I read with the 6th grade last year.  It is a historical novel based on a true epidemic that struck Philadelphia in 1793, a plague that killed 5000 people, 10% of the population.  Some of the characters in the book are actual people who lived in Philadelphia during that time.
    Now, their assignment is to write themselves into the story.  They have been doing research on the historical situation portrayed in the book.  Today it was time to begin their first draft of their story and the chatter was a distraction.  Finally I said "For the next 5 minutes no one may speak."   That worked wonders as they turned to the task at hand.  Repeating that practice several times gave a balance of time for interaction, which is important becasue they are encouraged to collaborate, and individual effort.
    They decided that they would also write each other into their essays.  The finished products will be quite delightful.
     While they were thinking about the research they'd done on 1793 suddenly one of them asked me if I remembered black and white photographs.  They were quite impressed that I was old enough for that.  Then she asked "What were shoes called when I was young?"   She was disappointed when I answered "shoes".   I am the oldest person any of them know.