Pursuing Positivity Part II:  Bringing more of You into your classroom!

Do you have a song for that? 

Yes, that is a question that is often asked in my classroom. Let me explain. I love music and over the years I have written several silly songs to help my students remember some of the trickier (or quite frankly more boring) facets of science. Which brings me to this week’s topic: Bringing more of you into your classroom.  

Now I want you to think of the things that excite you.  Maybe it is your subject area but think outside of your classroom for a moment.  What excites you when you are not at work? What are your hobbies, interests, and activities? Now think of ways to incorporate those things into your teaching.

Besides music, I also enjoy playing board games and have developed several instructional games over the years. These prove to be great teaching tools and yet are very inexpensive. They only require folders, notebook paper, pens and colored markers. Sometimes I will borrow playing pieces of old board games that I have around the house.  I have used these to teach some of the “dry” Chemistry topics including Element Names and Symbols Bingo and Periodic Table Battleship, which uses electron orbitals. 

And speaking of electron orbitals…I have a friend who is a baton twirler and is now teaching Science.  She brought in her baton and twirled it to demonstrate the different 3-dimensional shapes of electron orbitals.  How cool is that? In the spirit of full disclosure: I could never do this! I would knock myself unconscious just attempting it. But she used her hobby to spark interest in her students and to demonstrate a difficult concept.  This perfectly illustrates my point!

Maybe you enjoy physical fitness.  Incorporate that into your lessons when you study the heart, muscles, or lungs.  Bring your workout clothes to class one day and teach the students stretches.  For older students, have them name the muscles that they are stretching. You could even demonstrate breathing techniques to teach students how to calm themselves down before an exam.

Possibly you enjoy sewing. Teach your students some basic techniques and have them sew a project for a book you are reading in class. Or have them each decorate a square of fabric and then teach them to sew each square together.  It can hang in your room as a reminder of that shared experience.  Keep it in the room for décor or pull a name from a hat for a student to take home at the end of the year.

 Maybe you like to cook.  I have my Anatomy students take their favorite unhealthy food and try to find or create their own healthy version of that recipe.  Then we cook all of them and bring them in for lunch on the last day that we study the Digestive system. You could also use this for teaching geography.  You could assign students to bring in foods from a particular country as you study it. You could even use this for math class.  Take a recipe and have the students change everything to the metric system units!

Here is my challenge for you:  what can you do to bring more of “you” into your classroom? Think of ways that you can use your passions to spark an interest in your students.

So, you do not need fixing – just bring more of “you” into your classroom.  Your students will love it and it will help your attitude, too!

I would love to hear from you in the comments section below about how have you used a personal interest to spark excitement in your classroom?

Stay Tuned for the final installment of Pursuing Positivity Part III:  One good thing!

In case you missed it, click below to read Pursuing Positivity Part I:  You don’t need fixing!