I teach kids, kids that are 13 to 14 and getting ready to enter high school. It’s fun and exhausting; and even though it’s work, I don’t call it work, because when it becomes work, I think I’ll quit and never go back. I hope that day never comes, I mean the day when it becomes work.

That’s why, when I get an e-mail like I did today, it gives me the energy to keep going.

Hi Clayton,

Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into the Recap Pioneer program! Here’s a badge for your blog. Please send us a short bio and photo for the Pioneers page.

I am excited.

Let’s Recap is free software that teachers can use to assign a question and students can respond by recording a video response. It’s easy to use and easy to use for my students. I’ve used it twice, once on a test run and more recently last weekend to gauge how well my students understood why the American colonists were upset with England and King George III in the period leading up to the American Revolution. In previous years I’ve assigned a protest letter and students wrote the letter and handed it in to me. This year I tried Recap and I was impressed with the results. My students still used the traditional planning with pen and paper- though it wasn’t required – but the results showed deeper thinking and I believe better transfer of the content. I’ll discover how well it worked next Friday when I give the unit assessment.  Fingers crossed.

Teaching is an art. There’s the fine line of balance between content and skills as well as the line between how much I do and how much my students do. Teaching and learning are very different from when I began 17 years ago and when I was an 8^th grader 41 years ago. But kids are mostly the same, they need a challenge and they need to know I care. That’s where I get most of my energy, from the kids.

So it’s early Friday morning and usually I limp, in more ways than one, into the last day of the school week. But not this week, Tuesday I was at a Constitutional seminar backed by the Bill of Rights Institutive and Thursday afternoon, I got the extra boost I needed to sail into Friday with energy when the e-mail arrived from Recap. It’s gonna be a great day, I know it and I can feel it. Making the Days Count, one day at a time, one little change to the way I teach and assess. Learning every day.

What gave you the boost to make it through Friday?