How we were all feeling in classroom A122 yesterday.

This is what I heard from a student yesterday as we were continuing our research on planets for an informative project we are currently working on in writing.

We have already ventured to the library this week to learn about researching on our school iPads and the computer lab to use some kid friendly search engines. Everything has been going swimmingly and my kiddos (side note: I never thought I would be a person to use the word ‘kiddo’…until I became a teacher. I’m pretty sure only education related people use this phrase?) have been so excited and interested in this project. Teacher win! Enthusiasm about learning! Positive sentiments abound from my little brain!

Until yesterday.

When I brought out…

the books.

Our librarian pulled what I’m pretty sure is every planet and space book to ever exist in our school and is graciously letting our grade level hoard them until further notice. I gave my students copious amounts of time to continue their research and read about their planets and I thought everything was going to go just as fabulously as it had been the past week. Five minutes in. WRONG.

While only one student actually uttered the above phrase, many thoughts of  similar meaning were shared. I love that my students are so adept in the use of technology. I love that they love using technology for learning. But my eyeballs almost rolled out of my head yesterday when multiple students came to me completely mystified – looking at the book, looking at me, looking at the book, looking at me – wondering how the heck they were supposed to use the words on the pages.

I can honestly say that yesterday was the first time in my teaching career that I felt completely and totally…old and lost. I had to walk my students through using a book, finding a fact, and taking a note. I was absolutely astounded at even having to think about teaching something like this in my class. Now I know that kids are in front of a screen more today than they have ever been in the past but a part of my hopelessly-romantic-teaching-philosophy heart hoped that books were not becoming lost and forgotten.

It definitely helped me gain some perspective and I’m interested in seeing how the rest of this project goes…because we are done researching on the computers and the books are pretty much all we have left! I hope we can hold it together. I may just be rocking their worlds a little *too* much.

Oh, and yesterday we had about 8.7 meltdowns in my classroom. Myself included. Thank God it’s the weekend!