In this project we made a constitution for our teaching team, involving a preamble, one article, and ten sections in that article. I worked closely with two people - Ricky Gracida and Jacob Fikes - but our entire class contributed to one constitution. Working with my smaller group was fine; we didn't have any problems combining our ideas and we could work on something a bit more refined. When we started combining the ideas with the whole class, though, I will admit that it was a bit frustrating, because of how long it took to decide on just one clause in the preamble - we had around ten clauses total - and because it was rather hectic.
In this project, I learned how the U.S. legislature works - on a much larger scale, of course - and I also learned that I will never run for a position in government. I've never really aspired to a position like that, and this project only reinforced my unwillingness to run for government. Seriously, though, I did learn what it is like to try to decide on one thing with a large group of people. Something that went well was just the fact that I could have fun with what went into our preamble draft; we talked about the Carol/Schwartz team in the 9th grade wing of HTHNC (very specific and lengthy as compared to most groups') and we also used the term "exquisite work", as suggested by Jacob. So, if you hear that term in our classroom, well, now you know the origin.
The most difficult things about combining our ideas in our smaller three-person group were the time limits imposed on us. We would have each written our own draft of a preamble, and then we had to combine them, but we only had five minutes to write a new one. We took too much time to combine our ideas, and we didn't have enough time to write, so we went over our allotted time a little bit. It didn't end up posing a problem, and I have learned since how to spend less time thinking and more time writing. Once the entire class signed it, it was finished. Our final constitution turned out looking very good; if I were able to change one thing, though, I would go back and finish going over each of the sections in sharpie to make the constitution look more finished.
In this project, I learned how the U.S. legislature works - on a much larger scale, of course - and I also learned that I will never run for a position in government. I've never really aspired to a position like that, and this project only reinforced my unwillingness to run for government. Seriously, though, I did learn what it is like to try to decide on one thing with a large group of people. Something that went well was just the fact that I could have fun with what went into our preamble draft; we talked about the Carol/Schwartz team in the 9th grade wing of HTHNC (very specific and lengthy as compared to most groups') and we also used the term "exquisite work", as suggested by Jacob. So, if you hear that term in our classroom, well, now you know the origin.
The most difficult things about combining our ideas in our smaller three-person group were the time limits imposed on us. We would have each written our own draft of a preamble, and then we had to combine them, but we only had five minutes to write a new one. We took too much time to combine our ideas, and we didn't have enough time to write, so we went over our allotted time a little bit. It didn't end up posing a problem, and I have learned since how to spend less time thinking and more time writing. Once the entire class signed it, it was finished. Our final constitution turned out looking very good; if I were able to change one thing, though, I would go back and finish going over each of the sections in sharpie to make the constitution look more finished.