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Robin Plowman was a fifth grade teacher at Ybarra Elementary School when she told this story. She is currently a first and second grade teacher at Ybarra.

I gave my fifth grade students an assignment recently that went beyond my wildest expectations. It was a culminating project for a unit on plants, animals, and cell theory – all this high-falutin’ stuff that the students had done with their science teacher. I met with the science teacher and my partner teacher to create the project. I also talked to a former colleague of mine who now teaches at the college level who had the idea to have the kids create a giant mural based on “Monet’s Garden.”

So, on the classroom wall, I posted a giant piece of brown paper that I had made to look like a garden. It had Monet’s pond and his house, and I wrote on it in French, “Monet’s Garden in Giverny, France.” The students came in and said, “What’s that Mrs. Plowman? What is that?” They all wanted to know and were so curious about it.

I told them, “We are going to create a mural of Monet’s garden.” I honestly think they got so excited about the project because I was excited about it. They immediately went to websites to learn how to fold origami flowers to go on the mural. I expected them to just draw the flowers, and I would slap them up and that would be all. But as they came in, I made a big deal out of gluing their stuff up on the mural. I think the key piece was that they knew they had to take ownership of that blank space. It was so simple.

There were origami water lilies with leaping frogs, and 3-D tissue paper delphiniums. I even had one boy make a calla lily out of tissue paper. He brought it into class and said, “Mrs. Plowman, smell my calla lily.” I did, and said, “Oh my gosh! Did your mom –?” “Yeah, my mom put that in there.” His mom had soaked a cotton ball in perfume so that the flower smelled. He was so excited about that. They all went over the top with the mural. I still have it hanging in my room. I just can’t bear to take it down.

It’s the first time that I’ve done something like this, and I think it’s because of all the networking I’ve done through Ball at the Immersion and Networking Days. I had a lot of discussions with other teachers about how teacher enthusiasm can affect students. If you’re into it, and you’ve put some thought into that lesson, then the students respond to you. Teacher enthusiasm should not be underestimated.

We also talked a lot about how isolated you can get as a teacher. You don’t get that interaction with your colleagues where you coach and support each other. You forget how valuable it is to have someone say, “Robin, that’s a great idea. Why don’t you do that?” Or you have an idea, but you don’t share it with someone. So it dies because it gets lost with, “I’ve got to do this benchmark instead.” I’m definitely going to continue to reach out and network to teachers at all the grade levels.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.