This past week in school two days were dedicated to an all school activity (first thru eighth grade) called Color War. The idea of this activity is to promote team building among students as well as leadership skills in the middle school, particularly the eighth grade.
We have been doing this activity for several years; in fact, I participated in Color War when I was a student at the school! Since I have been teaching at the school there has been different formats that the activity took and different amount of time that has been dedicated to it.
At the beginning of the week last week, I felt pretty negative towards the Color War. Mostly because I felt like we have so much learning to do and it just did not seem a worthwhile use of time. Part of the way the students are able to demonstrate leadership is that the eighth graders pretty much plan the entire event. There are several activities throughout the day that have been the same year after year, but the students plan how to break out the Color War and how to organize the days. Teachers are assigned to each team to help monitor and provide supervision, but we barely did anything! It was amazing to watch the Middle school kids really take on the leadership. The younger student began looking to them instead of the teachers, when they had to leave the room for anything even to use the restroom.
Although I still wish I had more teaching time, it definitely taught the students strong team building and leadership skills and reminded me that there are other important skills we must impart on our children other than academics.
rebeccaaf 