Running Like a Giraffe
It's time for you to be jealous that I wasn't one of your middle school teachers.
Today's lesson is how not to lose your students' attention spans.
Currently, I have a class of 8 students. I was showing them a faux pas in photography called the merger. This is when a person stands in front of a coat rack and it looks like they have antlers.
Well, my example was two giraffes. One was standing right in front of the other, so it looked like it was one giraffe body with two long necks and two heads. So, I asked the kids, how would you solve this problem?
"Just move," one of them said.
"Exactly," I said. "Just change your angle."
Then I proceeded to say that you couldn' t just yell at the giraffes and tell them to move. This is when I started to act the scene out:
"Psst, giraffe, I need you to move" I called out at the imaginary zoo. I dramatically motioned for it to move. And then I said, "It's not like the giraffe will hear you and run to the side so you can take a better picture."
That's when I started to gallop around the room like a giraffe. I stuck my arms out and they were my front hooves, and I stretched my neck out as a giraffe.That's when the kids started laughing. Hard. One of them was crying he was laughing so hard. I didn't not intend for that to happen. I merely was struck by a comedy routine by Eddie Izzard where he traipsed around the stage like a giraffe. I mimicked it in my classroom. I lost their attentions.
Now, every day, the kids ask me to run around the room like a giraffe.