10. Clubs Rock!!

10. Clubs Rock!

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

*Organizational structures foster purposeful learning and meaningful relationships. Organizational Structures

This we believe (NMSA, 2010) provides sixteen characteristics of exemplary middle schools. This blog addresses the tenth characteristic and falls under the category of Curriculum and instruction. 

Middle school structures include: teaming, intramurals, interdisciplinary instruction, exploratories, and advisory as common tools. Our advisory program takes place thirty minutes each day. The idea of "club time" came about after an in-service exploration of ways to develop structures within a team that develop social and emotional development. We, as a team, are exploring the use of "club time" to engage our students in active, exploratory approaches to learning as one of our advisory periods during the week. Teachers selected their areas of interests and offered students the opportunity to choose which club they wanted to participate. Our topics include: wellness, coding, comic books, and math/science and art. We are revising our schedule, deducting five minutes off classes, so  we can have “club time” in conjunction with the thirty-minute Spartan Time (our advisory period).

This week, we started our clubs with an introductory session that lasted thirty minutes, followed by a sharing of student-generated Super Bowl commercials (see blog on Super Bowl Sunday: PBL). Students enjoyed time to explore an interest, engage in social interactions, and ignite their creative energies. We believe that part of advisory (a time to develop social and emotional skills) is to allow our team of teachers to support our students in multiple ways. Student responses to clubs include:

"We have lots of ideas of what we want to do in our coding club!"

"About four of us want to sing. We are going to use the art club as a place to sing, as art."

"We talked about what we want to do in our wellness class."

"We are going to be reading comic books and making comics."

As you can see, students are taking an active role in their clubs already!! 

Advice

1)   When creating “club time,” be sure that all teachers on the team participate. We came up with the clubs and offered them to our students. No student said, “There is not anything I am interested in.” (:

2)   Choose a time for engaging in “club time.” We want to have our “club time” on Wednesdays.

3)   Be sure and get feedback from your students as well as the teachers regarding Club Time.