Allison Cameron the teacher! Not the Character on Greys….

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”  Joseph Addison

There is an ongoing joke at work, whenever the Education Assistants (EA’s) are chatting in the halls it is said that we are solving all of the world’s problems or gossiping.  However most of the time we are talking about the student’s that we are working with or the classroom community and how the students cope with daily classroom events.  From these glorious conversations you can usually here me saying, “When I make my own school *insert big ideas here* I bet the behaviours and learning would be different.”  I have recruited quite a bit of staff for my imaginary school in all of these brilliant discussions!! Now I have found out that some of my ideas are legit!  I’ve talked about how I would change when exercise is happening, have desks where students could stand, and computer stations that were higher.  More movement breaks more daily physical activity and student involvement with each other during different classroom tasks.  After seeing the video about Allison Cameron and her class (here’s the link if you would like to watch it) http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/story/2009/10/06/national-braingains.html I was charged up; I’d love to have a classroom like that!  The concept that a student (and let’s be real sometimes the teacher) would be able to get pent up energy, frustrations, or anxieties out and not be singled out for doing so is an amazing idea.  Hopefully when I am finished my degree and teaching in a school my classroom will have these wonderful activists and many more happening in it.  If I remember correctly, I think in 3rd or 4th year of the Bachelor of Education program we get to do a service learning project.  Getting exercise equipment for a classroom or classrooms would be a great project and there is a lot of evidence supporting the positive outcomes.