The first day of class after the AP Exam is always an interesting experience—especially given the fact that we have over a month left of school!

It’s always one of my favorite lessons of the year, though—and this year we added a new ingredient: silly string.

Thanks 100% to the inspiration of Chanea Bond, we began by diving into Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” and as they read and analyzed, each time the word “filament” was spoken aloud, a strand of silly string made its way across the classroom.

(Yes, it got to the point where students were whispering “don’t say the the ‘f-word’ to each other! 😂)

The point of the poem: the importance of connection and in particular authentic connection—connection that comes from ourselves. From our telling of our own stories.

Step 2 in this lesson? Every student received a card with a narrative question/prompt on it, and they were randomly paired with another student—and we went on a quick stroll out to the interior courtyard of our building. The task: talk for 10 minutes straight with their partner only about the two questions on their cards.

You could see the initial awkwardness with some pairings, but then the wall broke and by the time the ten minutes were up, many groups looked disappointed at being interrupted.

Which then leads to the final step: an introduction to their final project of the year—one that I’ve come to cherish in our classroom despite the initial disgruntles from deservedly exhausted students. (They just finished the AP Exam, after all!)

1342 words to write/create something they find meaningful to share with the rest of us.

Always, this question pops up in our debrief after introducing the project: “Mr. Luther, what if we don’t know what is meaningful to us?”

Me: “Figuring that out feels like a quite worthwhile way to spend the rest of our time together, doesn’t it?”

TL;DR this job can be really, really cool (even when it can be really, really exhausting/frustrating), especially when you can get new ideas from other really cool teachers 🙏