"Withitness" and a Renewed Sense of Classroom Possibility

I spent some time in Max's kindergarten classroom this morning. Fun, inspiring and impressive stuff. I could feel it coming together for many of the kids as it happened: 7+7=14, 7+6=13, 7+5=12, the power of doubles. The sound of things clicking was all but audible.

Ms. Silver has mad skillz: eyes in the back of her head, ability to seamlessly redirect, iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove command of the room. I really don't like Malcolm Gladwell (trite, I'd rather be interesting than right) and I especially didn't like his article in the New Yorker about teaching and quarterbacking, but watching Ms. Silver was like a live demonstration of the "withitness" he cites.

All the usual activities were in play too: group activity (doing their daily "survey" - very scientific [and cute]) precipitates individual work; representatives identified to share their individual solutions; representatives in turn get to sit on the big chair, show & discuss their solutions, and call on students who have questions about it (and there were questions from the audience, and they all raised their respective hands, and the share-ers all called on the students in a very teacher-like way ["yes, Rachel?"]). The rank enthusiasm and the undivided attention were jaw-dropping. My own sense of possibility for my classroom have been nicely recalibrated. Thanks for that, Ms. Silver!

I was useless as a volunteer but I had a ball. The low point of my visit: before we started some of the kids were giving me a guided tour of the self portraits they'd done that were recently hung in the classroom. Next to each was an inventory of attributes (eyes- brown, etc.) as well as a feature that "makes me special". Max noted (yikes!) that his "light skin makes him special". In his defense, he is pale as a ghost and it is noteworthy, but boy did I cringe when I read that.