There are a lot of things that happen in an educational setting today that didn’t happen when I was in high school. No surprise there — I’m a solidly middle-aged guy, so you’d expect that things would have changed in some way, shape, or form.
One change that has become an everyday buzzword in schools is a thing called “Bell Work.”
Practically, there’s nothing really new or groundbreaking about the idea of Bell Work; it’s just an activity or assignment that students are supposed to work on right as the bell is ringing at the start of class. The goal is to more efficiently utilize class time by having students do something immediately when they enter the room. (Because, presumably, students were doing nothing before.)
I’m guessing Bell Work became a thing because some administrator somewhere wanted to make it look like they were “improving” student and teacher performance at their school or district by shaving off those wasted minutes of class during which those same teachers and students were saying hello to each other and/or making small talk.
Anywho. There are a variety of bell work activities that I have students do throughout the year, but right now we’re doing a new kind of bell work that I’m calling “The Fight Bracket.”
Basically, I created a tournament bracket of 16 fictional characters that are going to square off in battle to discover who, ultimately, is the strongest fictional character of all. At the end of class, I give students a QR code to a Google Form that asks, “Who would win in a fight, X or Y?” and has the day’s two contestants as options. Whoever gets the most votes is crowned victorious and moves on to the next round.
The next day, I share the results and give out the next “Battle.”
ChatGPT made this. Sue me.
What does all of this have to do with English? Not a damned thing! It’s just entertaining to talk about.
No offense to the admin who thought up “Bell Work” as a way to show their boss that they were making schools better by cutting out all that “wasted class time,” but I’m going to spend a little bit of each day just doing fun stuff.
As Kurt Vonnegut said,
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
