6th Hour Strategies

Monday, May 5, 2025

Happy 35th anniversary, Donna and Michael!

I worked for a middle school special ed teacher today. I helped out in three sections of 6th grade math (yay math) then had two sections of strategies. Strategies is a 21st century name for study hall. I think when we started calling it that, the idea was for special ed teachers to teach study skills, etc., but it rapidly became a catch-up hour, then more of a not-another-hour-of-class-to-get-behind-in hour (strictly my opinion), and now an opportunity to make substitute teachers suffer (still strictly my opinion) (I do realize that is all I can offer).

So, end of the day, 6th hour strategies went like this.

Three kids come in and start pulling the chairs and tables all over the room.
“What are you doing?”
“We always do this.” (This is the most frequently heard sentence by substitute teachers. I hear it every hour. It is NEVER what they always do. Other kids IMMEDIATELY say, “no we don’t”. The original kid(s) always doubles down, “yes, we do”.)
Another kid comes in and says, “What are you doing? Why are you moving everything?”
I laugh, the others do not. They literally do the over-the-top stage whisper “Tell her we always do this.”
I lose interest in watching and go to get the attendance slip. Four of eight kids are there when the bell rings. Two more come within the next couple minutes. I mark two absent and send a kid to the office with it.
“Okay. We have 30 minutes of work time before you get choice time.”
“Noooo. We just kick back in here. We don’t do work. It’s strategies.”
And so it begins. I point out that I was in math with four of them and I know they did not do their math in class. I have to physically open their binders to find the assignment. We start. One of the missing kids shows up. He was somewhere. He forgot where. Back to math. Ther are two balloons filled with rice (homemade juggling balls to me) that are just for squeezing, but are being thrown. No one is being really loud or irritating, but not much is being done, either. One kid says he is just going to sit and stare because that is allowed. Okay. Another kid says he is, too. Okay. I do some math. I get all four math-ers going and we get it done. It was a VERY easy and short assignment. I check for other homework. Nope nope nope. Everyone is going to sit and stare, but no one is sitting and staring. They are all walking around and talking. And throwing the balloon balls. And flinging a stretchy, gummy-ish rope.

It’s so fun.

I lied. It’s not.

Yet.

The second missing kid comes in. He is just showing up for the day. We are halfway through the last hour of the day. Huh. I ask him if he wants to do the notes from math or work together on the assignment. His eyes show absolute horror at the thought. Noooo!

There is a little bit of a commotion. I look where everyone else is looking and there is a sticky hand on the ceiling.

Of course there is. (A sticky hand is a hand shaped gooey, sticky plastic thing that is fun to stretch and fling. It will stick to whatever it lands on – wall, floor, ceiling…)

Immediately, almost everyone is jumping.

These are tiny 6th graders. This is a schoolroom ceiling. The two of these things are never going to meet. They jump for a while and then I stop them. One climbs on a chair. He is still nowhere close to reaching. I get a ruler and climb on the chair. The chair rocks – it literally is designed to be able to push back and recline and it is NOT stable at all. I take a swipe at the hand, am nowhere close, and get off the chair with help from an offered hand. It is NOT safe to be on the chairs, so that is out. The kids gather and start coming up with ideas. At first, they are realllly bad ideas (throw the chair on the ceiling…), then we try a few (because although they are bad ideas, they don’t seem like they hurt anyone or anything). We take turns throwing the ruler at it (with everyone behind the thrower. Each person gets a turn). I decide that we are done because the corner of the ruler could imbed itself in the ceiling tile and get stuck. Bad. We throw the rice balloon. Couple people hit the hand and increase its adherence to the ceiling. One kid tries to throw his backpack. It goes up about a foot. We build a long stick of markers (see POTD) to rub it down, but the markers come apart.

We are working together. Everyone is offering ideas and everyone is accepting the ideas. Not one time were there negative words! They offered each other encouragement in all their throws of random things. They said things like, “You got this! You’re going to get it! Do it! Yes!”

If I had made up a task for them and said work together it WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. Nothing would have happened but complaining. This was great. And the minute hand was actually charging through the hour!

Someone thought of using a chair from the pod area – a counter height chair. They decided if a kid held it steady on each corner it would not wobble. A kid got on it the chair and stood up with two other kids supporting him. He had the ruler – and stretching as much as he could he reached it!!! No one let go of the support while they cheered. It wasn’t down yet. It wasn’t moving at all. Suggestions were pouring out – all in almost whispers, like they were going to scare the sticky hand away if they got too loud. “Get the thumb down first.” “Scrape up the little finger.” ” “Do it slow, but push hard.”

And it finally fell to the ground.

There was jumping and celebrating! We all agreed that it was the most fun we had ever had in strategies.

I have different kids tomorrow for the same class. I wonder if I can capture lightning in a bottle and try to do it again.

****

That was really long, so I will try to be short now. Metro Brass played with the Eagan high school wind ensemble tonight. The kids played three tunes, then MB played six. The audience was really appreciative. The students around me were very excited. The standing ovation at the end of their part of the show seemed genuine. It was pretty exciting. The band director told us that MB really lit up the audience, because that response is NOT usual. Good job, everyone. Tom and Louise and Daniel and Amanda all came. Wow! Again – it is just so amazing to have your friends show up for concerts!! Thank you!

As Keith, Dan, and I were walking out, two self-described trumpet nerds caught up with us. They eventually confessed that one of the band directors had said we were going that way and they ran to catch us. They had lots of questions about mouthpieces and lessons and music and all of the trumpet nerdy stuff. It was really cute.