Before the Flood and Learning how to fail (and succeed)

This week was interesting in a few ways. First, it was the week after the election. At first, there was a lot of tension between the teachers, who were most unanimously against Trump and the student body, who were almost all rooting for him. While students tried to poke out of me who it was I votes for, I decided rather than soap boxing that I would take a class period for each class and allow the students to talk about their thoughts. I encouraged them to stay on the topic of the country's environmental future, which they did. Through these conversations, it became clear that the students did care about the environment enough to realize that Trump's current plan for conservation and fossil fuel usage did not sit well with them. I was impressed with these findings because I only listened to them talk, with an occasional redirection of the conversation. With this in mind, I bought and showed the students a new documentary, Before the Flood. This documentary is narrated and hosted by Leonardo DeCaprio, as he was elected a UN peacekeeper and who then took it upon himself to raise awareness to the current environmental crises for our planet. The film was also made during the making of DeCaprio's film, The Revenant, which my students thoroughly enjoy.  The overwhelming opinion after watching the film was that it was "depressing" and "eye-opening", which was what I was hoping for.

This week was also the time in which grades and comments were released to students and parents, which is followed  a few days later by parent-teacher conferences. I was lucky enough to have very successful students in my homeroom, which made for very happy parents. Needless to say, the conferences went great! However, in my classes, there were a number of students who felt their grades were lower than they should be. It is never an easy conversation to have with students as they realize where the gaps in their work for a quarter were. It is almost like the stages of grief, where there is denial, bargaining, anger and then finally acceptance. In the majority of these meetings both the students and I came out of the meetings feeling as if there was a plan to succeed and that we could both move forward with a much brighter outlook for their success this year. Often times it came down to organization or bringing by an assignment finished early so that we could make sure it was on task. For some students, it can be hard to accept that once the low marks had happened, there was nothing they could do retroactively to bring it back. However, I have pointed out to these students that they need to focus on the work ahead, rather than the mistakes in the past in order for them to succeed.