Let Our Voices Be Heard

Finding Answers

Today was one of those stellar days when everything goes right. Even watching a kid get led out in handcuffs two doors down and getting stuck in lockdown during my planning period couldn’t dampen the mood.

My students are learning about the Protestant Reformation, and in conversation with one of the cool admins yesterday (he’s totally cool. He wears one of those little European hats and has a supply of checkered scarves), he gave me permission to let the kids create a “95 Theses” of our school, as long as we focused on policies and not people. All my blocks rose to the occasion, but it was 3^rd period that got into elongated debates on the nature of school rules. Two students fresh back from suspension were particularly vocal, and the debates were so coherent that I told the class, if we finished early, we could march down to the front office and hang it on Mr. B’s door.

The kids were all aghast. “Won’t we get in trouble, Ms. W?”

Using QR codes to find the answers to the questions. Many were
hidden deviously throughout the classroom. Truth is,
teachers like to play even more than students do.

“Nah, if anyone gets in trouble, it will be me.” I told them I talked to him yesterday, and he’d be cool with it. They aren’t as savvy about coolness as I am, especially in adults. So, sure enough, the kids were baller committed and focused on their work. They were scanning QR codes throughout the classroom (I put some on the ceiling, too, and told them this was the ONE time they were allowed to stand on the furniture) on a scavenger hunt about the methods of the Counter Reformation, and raced all over to access the web pages and videos and Prezis that answered their 5 questions so they could be the team to win (first to the Inquisition gets chocolate!).  

Student John Hancocking the 95 Theses.

When they finished, they looked up at me with big pleading eyes. “Now?”

“Okay.” So we marched down the quad behind our big piece of butcher paper proclaiming the school’s 30 Theses. I stopped them before the administration building and hushed them all. Like little angels, they tiptoed in and taped the 30 theses to Mr. B’s door, and tiptoed out to the startled looks of another principal and the office staff. As we left, I saw the principal move over to check out the poster on the door. He leaned over by the revised school motto they’d written, right above their signatures: LET OUR VOICES BE HEARD! Preach.