Thursday, October 13, 2011

Let's Have Some Fun!

You know, sometimes it’s just a good thing to step back and have some fun. We have had quite a bit of fun the past couple of weeks with Homecoming and the festivities that come with that. In fact we even put a little more emphasis on the fun part as quite honestly, in years past there wasn’t that much going on that was fun. We added competitive games between advisory groups that were well received. Kids got a kick out of trying to work their way through hula-hoops and breaking apart frozen blocks of knotted t-shirts. Changing things up on Friday with a pep rally that included all of the kids in the district brought electricity into the gym. And the introduction of the “Interlude Dance” saw our kids drop their inhibitions and fill the floor, breaking moves and having a great time!

And then the Home Makeover crew came to town and out of the blue late Tuesday afternoon Mr. Willhite got a call asking if our softball team wanted to play a “fun” game Wednesday evening. The HM folks wanted to blow off some steam and work off some stress, and at the same time give folks in the community a chance to come out and see them. Talk about a “Field of Dreams” night! To a person, the girls that got to play had a great time! Talk to people that were there and the first thing out of their mouth was “it was a lot of fun!”

I think that we need to rediscover “fun” at school. No, I don’t expect teachers to be entertainers, and hard work generally isn’t fun. But, there are ways to make learning fun and I have seen it. Students had a great time designing and building Rube Goldberg machines in physical science over the past couple of weeks as they studied force and motion. I saw some hilarious “presentations” in speech class where students demonstrated things you don’t do when giving a speech. And it has been fun for kids to be part of the Interlude dance at events ever since it was introduced to us at homecoming. Days sure do seem to go a little bit better when you have a chance to laugh and smile a bit!