Introducting Spectacular Things

I started reading Schultz's Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons form an Urban Classroom a week ago. I wanted to complete the reading assignments as fast as I could, so I can work on my IQ project--I wanted to kill two birds with one stone. That didn't happen--my stone killed no bird. I stopped reading the book after the first two chapters because I had more important things to take care like working on my IQ project which I did not work on. So, yesterday, I started reread Schultz's book.

I must confess, going back a week ago, at first I didn't find the book interesting or "spectacular." I don't know why. Things took a turn for the better, I started getting the "juice" of the book. Clearly, what the students in Room 405 were doing were not solving a textbook problem. They were doing spectacular things; things that haven't done in my decade and a half of education. These fifth graders in Carr Academy were learning math, reading, writing, social studies, and other things on a curriculum based on one thing--getting a new school. I don't know how Schultz did it. Nonetheless, Schultz was able to mold all the above content while these fifth grades in Room 405 fought for what their Board of Education had promised them six years ago--a new school.

The fifth graders in Room 405 went to a school that had no lunchroom or a gym. As the children tell us in their 'pizza thing' that they had to eat in the hallway and they had to use a gym across the street for physical education and extracurricular activities. Furthermore, their classroom which supposes to be a learning environment had no AC or heat. Their restrooms were fiflty and smelly; they had leaky sinks; they were no soap or paper towels;and no bargage cans in the restrooms, as they tell us in their 'pizza thing.' Man, reading their descriptions of their school, I thought those fifth graders were describing inside my good, old, high school. However, looking back and started to think, I realized my school wasn't that better in comparison to Carr Academy. These kids had it worst than me. That's all I have for now. I'll return with more about Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons form an Urban Classroom.