School Spirit, KIPP-Style

At celebration, friday afternoons presented at McDonogh 15 most, students played video games devised by personnel for a 50 percent hour, and students who got no behavioral issues and who experienced received the lottery could strike any educator or innovator they selected with a pie. (Not coincidentally, Is casual-dress trip to the institution fri.) One mile away and four days later, a professor at the AERA (American Educational Research Association) twelve-monthly conference denounced KIPP as a "concentration camp," but to those folks who've been there, KIPP McDonogh 15 is approximately as definately not a concentration camp since you can get.

Not absolutely all KIPP colleges take care of the institution day in a similar way. On the day-to-day basis, the KIPP Delta schools in Arkansas are just a little stricter than the KIPP schools in New Orleans: the network varies across communities more than critics or supporters realize. But at KIPP Delta even, teachers may well not survive the full day without getting a pie to the face. We spent two days observing at KIPP Blytheville College Preparatory School (BCPS) in Blytheville, Arkansas, in March 2013 during Geek Week. Each March at KIPP BCPS, students take part in a complete week of activities much like Heart Week in traditional open public academic institutions. Geek Week included Pattern Day, where students mismatched different patterns on the clothing; Superhero Day, where students outfitted as a common superhero; and Geriatric Day, where students dressed up like older people. The festivities culminated with Pi Day, on March 14 (3.14). On Pi Day, students received an information sheet about the quantity pi, noting its background and function in mathematics. The sheet included a reflection image of the real amount 3.14, which appeared as if the letters P, I, and E.

An over-all air of thrills preceded the Pi Concern, where students competed to see who could recite the most digits of pi, accompanied by the opportunity to struck a tuned professor with a pie. Student surveys picked the three "meanest" teachers in the institution to "pie," along with school director Maisie Wright, plus they in turn surely got to honor, or dishonor, three students with pies in the facial skin, students who had overcome great challenges perhaps, or who gave them the most grief. To the key event of pies to the face prior, the constructed KIPPsters cheered on the classmates in the Pi Problem. The cafeteria-turned-temporary-auditorium was hushed as you university student after another recited the digits and Ms. Wright examined the real volumes. One student in the audience looked on with baited breath, a 7th grader who held the institution pi record at 186. This young woman had moved out of state, time for KIPP Blytheville during her spring break to see if her record would indeed be broken. A valiant work was created by all competitors, but in the final end, a woman in 6th class received the crown for your day by reciting 158 digits of pi without tripping up. Following the Pi Challenge, one at a time, you start with a countdown from 5...4...3...2...1, the engaging educators and students smashed pie plates of whipped cream into each other's encounters. The learning student assembly, which possessed continued to be sitting and noiseless mainly, was now within an uproar, with high-fives, hooting, hollering, cheering, jumping along even, as they observed their educators and KIPP "teammates" getting pied.

Ahead of Geek Week at BCPS, we noticed a lock-in event called Standard Madness cleverly, following the Arkansas Benchmark testing to be implemented in a month's time. We were surprised when a trained teacher rolled into a cafeteria packed with quietly seated students on a scooter, in his pajamas, filled with coordinating house and bathrobe shoes, spraying students with Silly String and Nerf firearm darts.

Outside and inside the class, students alongside one another should work. That evening, students enjoyed numerous team-building events uniting students, faculty, staff, and parent volunteers. Students participated in a number of activities. Walking from room to room, students could be observed tie-dyeing tee shirts, building clay sculptures, performing karaoke, building forts, and wanting to best the other person in word video games. These activities usually occurred in classrooms or at channels outside the house, by which small sets of students would turn. Once students acquired made complete rotations through the teacher-led activities, the training students would go back to the cafeteria for one hour of Electric power.

The first Hour of Electric power contains students learning tune parodies which were centered on strategies and desire to prosper in institution and on the future Benchmarks. Students belted out the lyrics of your song entitled "Combat That Standard Test." A nonstop party party placed from midnight to at least one 1 a.m. was the next Hour of Electric power. The ultimate Hour of Ability occurred at 5 a.m. While using the light of the increasing sun, the students adopted a few educators on the day run around campus. At the final end, other teachers added to the surface of the school buildings bombarded students with water balloons.

While none of the activities appeared to be related to the precise items which students would soon face on the standard exam, it was clear that leadership and teamwork were being developed. Students relied on and supported each other as they traveled in one activity to another with significant amounts of autonomy of their teachers and responsibility for maintaining all their group members. In the final end, the purposes of Standard Madness were to have a great time and stimulate students in their challenge to dominate standardized checks.

As KIPP Delta director Scott Shirey place it, the state standard exam is the foe that unites students and faculty: "If it didn't are present, we'd have to set-up it."