Tag Archives: stickers

What’s Your Object? SOL24 Day 18

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Writing everyday means looking for an idea for writing every day. I get a number of email newsletters about assorted topics that pique my interest. Today, it was the Art of Noticing newsletter that I was drawn to as I read the subject line, Objects Quarterly. To be honest I haven’t really read through it yet, just skimmed over the topics such as A History of Women in 101 Objects (which is book that I have not read). But as I skimmed that I started thinking about the role of objects in a teacher’s life.

I’m one of those teachers who still uses a traditional paper plan book. You know, the ones with plain brown or blue covers that has each week laid out with the spiral binding in the middle. For many years my plan books were just that, plain, unassuming…sometimes I wrote the year across the front (often once the year was over). Then at some point, my teaching partner and I started to put a sticker on each year that included the year, our names, and an image that indicated the overarching theme of our year. But recently, I started putting stickers on my plan book. Not just one here or there, but wall to wall stickers both front and back.

Where do I get these stickers, you might ask? And what significance do they have? Those are great questions. Some of the stickers are USvsHate stickers, student messaging about equity and inclusion. I’ve received them as a teacher who has submitted student messaging to the USvsHate contest. I’ve even had students whose messaging was selected as winning. And my son–the one who is an artist–designs and produces stickers as “swag” that he sends out with products he ships (he also sends his mom some stickers–and those are featured prominently). Now, I collect stickers from wherever I can. Sometimes the stickers are promotional, like the ones I got from the Rainbow sandals store. Some are from environmental organizations… The list goes on.

I love these stickers on my plan book. When I open it each morning my eyes skim over the images and it makes me smile. When my student gave me (and all her classmates) stickers last week, I carefully found a place for them on my plan book. One of my students noticed the plan book cover and said–hey, where did you get that sticker book? And so I had to show off the covers. (They never see the cover since I keep it opened to the week on a table most days.)

There was a time when my plan book mostly stayed at school, but since the pandemic I find myself taking it back and forth with me from school to home each day. Honestly, it is more of a security blanket since there are many days when I change almost everything that is written in it. But maybe that is what objects are all about–symbols of thinking and planning and preparation with my stickers reminding me of the value of creativity, social justice, nature, and whimsy.

If you were to write about an object in your professional life, what would it be? What is its significance? How do you personalize it?

Learning From Weeds

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My students seem to be falling in love with weeds.  After reading Weeds Find a Way yesterday, we invited students to be on the lookout for weeds.  And this morning while kids were out running laps for Cardio Club, I was presented with more than one dandelion puff–those magical seed pods of childhood.  I guess they wanted to make sure I knew how much they loved them!

And I love it when different classroom activities intersect and overlap, creating a deeper learning experience for all of us.  Today when students headed out to the garden with our gardening teacher, they went in search of weeds.  And while they had weeded the garden beds before, after our reading yesterday and with the gardening teacher knowing that we were learning about weeds, this time they were looking more closely.  One student came in from recess with a weed clutched in her fist.  She showed me the plant, pointing out what she was as interesting features.  She also let me know that she had sketched this plant in her gardening journal.

Student brought a basket full of weeds back to the classroom…and we’ll use them later this week in a science lab about weeds.  As I peered into the basket, I was immediately interested in the stickers on the plants that I remember as a child.  I have vivid memories of pulling those stickers out of my socks.  And of course, I had to grab my phone and take a few shots.

sticker weed

In some ways the topic of weeds has stuck to me like those stickers I used to pull out of my socks.  I’m noticing a lot of variety in weeds and find myself wishing I knew more about them. I’m also still thinking about labels and how that influences the way we view and treat those labeled as nuisance or disposable or disgusting or not worth time or energy.  This goes well beyond plants.  It seems to apply to both living things and inanimate items.

Think about those one-time use plastic bags that many people (me included) use to carry groceries home from the market.  We find them everywhere they don’t belong…on the ground, at the beach, on park benches and half buried in the sand.  They are seen as expendable, cheap, replaceable–so people are not taking care to keep track of them or even to dispose of them properly.

My city is contemplating banning these bags because of the environmental dangers they pose. How will the ban change the way people see them and use them?

And how does this apply to students?  Which are seen as expendable, easy to replace, just a number in the system? Does that change the way they are treated?

I’m glad we are learning about weeds.  They are helping me learn a lot about myself.