Thursday, December 9, 2021

Tie Breaker

As I was perusing the calendar for December, I noticed that the last day before our winter break is a minimum day. And while there is a chance that the district could hire a teacher before the break, it's unlikely, so I've been planning things through December for the class. 

I decided that we should have a party.

On the day I mentioned this to the class, the party day was two and a half weeks out. But they're adults (young adults ages 18-21). The program is a transition program, readying the developmentally disabled for the "real world" by teaching them skills to enable them to be more independent. 

I figure having them help in the planning for said party is curricular. I mean, I could write a lesson plan justifying my choices if needed. So, I wanted to give them plenty of time to come up with things and help in the getting it all set up. 

I suggested that we should do a gift exchange. For a holiday party, the two I know of are White Elephant and Secret Santa. I left it up to them to choose which one they wanted to do. 

I explained what they were. Sydney was familiar with White Elephant, so she explained it to the group. They were kind of familiar with Secret Santa already. Then I put it to a vote. 

There are nine students in the class. We got five for Secret Santa; then we got five for White Elephant. Logan voted twice. 

We explained to Logan that he could only vote once. I took the vote again. Four for each. Logan abstained. 

I was not going to break the tie. It had to be up to them. I encouraged the class to argue their sides to Logan, but no one took me up on it. 

After a second round of explanations, Logan finally decided.

We're going to do a White Elephant exchange. It should be interesting.

13 comments:

  1. I would love to see what they come up with for the exchange

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know I'm going to do a blog post about it.

      Delete
  2. The results of this should be interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would be interested in knowing the outcome, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unless nothing happens, there will be a post about how the exchange goes.

      Delete
  4. I hope we don't have to read about Logan refusing to participate!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Isn't a White Elephant the same thing as a Secret Santa? I'm REALLY not being a wiseguy (I think I'm incapable of being wise)...I really don't know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Secret Santa is where everyone draws names and gives a gift to the name they drew. White Elephant is where all the gifts go in a pot, and people pick them randomly as their names are drawn. And then there's the stealing.

      Delete
  6. I had to look up what White Elephant was and I am with Al, it thought the 2 are the same thing. Regardless, it will be fun to Red bout what happened.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did a White Elephant with my writing group several years back. I thought they'd benefit from trying a different gift exchange. It went pretty well. They had to be encouraged to steal. And then a few stole back the gift they had bought. Sigh.

      Delete
  7. Sounds like a fun decision, despite the drama.

    ReplyDelete

I appreciate your comments.

I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.