Nestled into a room in an academic building on campus, my team and I set up shop to create a winter wonderland. With cupcakes and steaming cups of hot cocoa at our sides, we bunkered down with a holiday movie and began cutting out snowflakes, yellow stars, evergreen trees, snow colored garland. I instantly forgot the stress that resulted preparing for this project. Thoughts like, “my cupcakes aren’t even iced yet” and “the movie we want isn’t available??” faded from my mind. Here I was, cutting out winter crafts with the corps members I love to spend my Monday and Thursday afternoons with. At the end of our very sad yet thoughtful holiday movie, we looked around the room. Blue and white garland stretched around the perimeter of the classroom. Snowflakes piled high on the table to create a snowy mountain. Stars and trees scattered around. What a beautiful mess. What a beautiful winter wonderland.
As we cleaned up the scraps of paper and the littered cupcake wrappers, we briefly discussed why we just spent two hours creating winter decorations for the our classrooms. Especially since we were team learning, not team joy or kindness. Though our value does not seem to connect with the purpose of our project, we quickly found that this perception was false. We figure- the more stimulating a classroom, the more opportunity to learn and grow. With new material introduced to the classroom atmosphere, the children are encouraged to question and explore. Especially coming from a city south of the Mason Dixon line, snow is something of an oddity. We feel that with these stimulating decorations the kids will be excited to learn about the new things adorning their room. The decorations will also serve to create a positive learning environment.
We often forget that there is learning to be had anywhere and everywhere.
~Brooke Williams
Team Leader
Team Learning 1
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