Collaging is Fun!!

I Reflecting back on collaging (which, fyi, Pages in iWork does not think is a valid verb - silly Pages....)- ok, so it’s been a few weeks, but better late than never, right?  I’ve been trying to figure out what lessons I can take from this assignment and the ensuing discussion over the following weeks, and it’s a bit hard for me.  Personally, I always hated school projects growing up - they always seemed like a lot of work to me, and usually pointless work at that.  In my mindset, why do I need to go through the effort of creating a physical object when I can just have a test on whatever was supposed to be learned, and do just fine on said test? (I can’t honestly remember having more than a dozen or two difficult tests in all my schooling until I got to college, where they got so hard the word test just wasn’t sufficient any more.)  Projects were just always sooo hard for me.  So one thing I learned in this assignment is that 6th grade work (collaging, in my mind, fits in this category) is a heck of a lot easier in 18th or 19th grade.  I mean, let’s go back to vocabulary tests every friday and geometry quizzes, and life would just be a whole lot easier.  But seriously, how do I apply what I’ve taken away from this to my teaching?  I think for one thing, I can realize that everyone has an intricate set of life experiences that shape who and what they are in this moment.  Somehow, taking the time to appreciate this fact, be it with a future student or coworker, or anyone for that matter, seems to allow me to appreciate that person more, even if I can’t relate to any of their particular disparate life experiences.  Another thing that strikes me is that this project was pretty easy to do because it dealt with just about all of the things that I am interested in.  I know it doesn’t exactly sound revolutionary, but one of the things that I’ll be working on is trying to figure out how to make math seem interesting and/or important to my students.  Another thing I might try - although I’m not certain about this yet, as I haven’t yet been in a classroom - is to get my students to share a little about themselves (probably not to the extent of our project, but something) with the hope that learning about one another will build a bond of mutual respect or appreciation, and maybe this can translate in caring about class?  I don’t know, it’s a stretch, but maybe worth a try.  This is all for now.