MadWordsMixed

What is your favorite thing about your middle school experience?

Think about your typical schoolday.  What part of it do you enjoy the most?

People?    Food?   Learning?    Lockers?   ISS?     Bus ride?

Thinking?

Mine is easy.  Maybe it is corny, but it undeniable and most true.  My favorite part of middle school is the title of this posting.

Hey, MadWords alumni, remember those warm 6th grade days? Remember when you came back after holiday break and truly began to feel like, “Hey, I am a righteous and real 6th grader. I have good grades, nifty compadres (friends), and cool shoes! I have so figured this middle school thing out”?

Remember?

Then, suddenly, the year began to go by so fast it became a blur. Assignments that were no problem before began to pile up in a couple of classes, parents got on you for slipping grades. Your organization was, well, what organization? Planner? Yeah, I remember something about a planner back in the fall when I was still a 6th grade worm trying to put together this whole mystical middle school drama.

Whoa! Well, maybe I am describing the second half of my 6th grade experience.

So, what was yours like? Was the second half of 6th grade vastly different from the first half? Or was there really no change at all?

So, share, one and all. I will be guiding my students to this posting to read about your experiences.

Anyone get stuck at Hayes on Monday morning?  What happened?  How long were you at school?  How did you get back home?  Was it an adventure–silly me, of course it was!

Tell us!  Is this the first time you missed school for a non-weather issue?

Here is the deal, Tess wrote that IMing is very important to her because it allows her to “talk” with her friends.

Communication is powerful business. All you have to do is Google “cell phone,” and you can guess at the number of results (and sales).

I recently exchanged my old cell phone for a new one (really?) that opens portrait as well as landscape. The landscape option is really designed for using the Qwerty keyboard for things like IMing, sending movies, pictures, etc. This is pretty cool, and fairly amazing technology, really.

I digress. I use my cell phone for calls, internet, e-mail, and IMing. What I would like to know is: Do you use IM? Why? Why not e-mail the person? Why not call the person? Why not surface mail the person?

What is your favorite part about IM? How do you think it has changed the way people communicate with each other? Do you IM your parents? Do you believe that IM will change the future of F2F communication?

They tell me that kids are the future, so, talk to me future!

TAFN

All right, I have read that it can take 1,000 years for an empty plastic water bottle (PWB) to break down and decompose in a landfill (aka, dump). A lot of people say that we are running out of land to put our junk on now. Where will we be in twenty years?

Think globally, act locally!

Ideas!  You people have shown yourselves to be intelligent, creative, and resourceful.  I need ideas about how to stop so many empty plastic water bottles from leaping into garbage cans around Hayes.

Question: Given that there are over 800 students at Hayes, added to maybe 100 adults daily in the building, how many empty water bottles accumulate in the trash in one day’s time? Now, remember, not everyone buys water in bottles, and not everyone tosses their empty water bottles into the trash when done.

So, back to the original quandary: Ideas for EWB receptacles?  What should they be?  Where should they be located to be the most successful?

Want to change the world?  Start with the part of it that is directly in front of you.