The view from the hallway

September is always a busy month at Boulder City High School.

We had football games, soccer, tennis, volleyball, golf, Homecoming dress-up days, a parade through town, our Homecoming assembly, the football game, and, of course, the dance. There has been a lot going on.

But when I think about September, some of my favorite moments aren’t the big ones. They are the everyday moments I get to see when I walk into classrooms.

One of my favorite parts of my job is visiting classrooms. I usually only stay for a few minutes, but those few minutes give me a chance to see what our students are learning and, more importantly, what they are doing with that learning.

And lately, I have seen a little bit of everything.

I watched physical science students make slime while learning about polymers. I saw geometry students working with rotations, reflections, and lines of symmetry, while algebra 2 students were solving quadratic equations and learning about complex numbers.

I listened as AP Literature students discussed identity through “The House on Mango Street” and watched our juniors dig into the contradictions of Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye.” Our U.S. history students researched the Little Rock Nine and the Civil Rights Movement, while seniors in government discussed the different roles of the House and Senate.

I have seen students learning about ecological niches in environmental science, creating in art and ceramics, analyzing music in band, getting their first look at festival music in choir, giving speeches, working with data, practicing Spanish, peer editing essays, and perfecting their volleyball skills in PE.

That’s a lot of learning happening in one little high school.

But there is something else I have been paying more attention to this year.

It isn’t just what our students are learning. It is what they are learning to do.

Can they work with someone else? Can they explain their thinking? Can they solve a problem when the answer isn’t immediately obvious? Can they adjust when something doesn’t work? Can they accept feedback and try again?

Those are durable skills, things like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, adaptability, perseverance, and reflection.

And they are happening everywhere.

They happen when students work together on a lab. They happen when someone has to explain how they got an answer in math. They happen when students peer edit an essay or stand in front of a class to give a speech.

They also happen outside the classroom.

I saw them during Homecoming when students spent hours working together to build floats. I see them on our athletic fields and courts. I see them when our student media students are behind the camera capturing what is happening at BCHS. And I recently watched students stand in front of our School Generated Funds Committee and present their own ideas for making our school better.

Sometimes we think learning is the grade on the test or the assignment that gets turned in. It is certainly part of it. But there is so much more happening in our classrooms every single day.

That may be my favorite thing about walking the halls of BCHS. I get to open a classroom door and see a small piece of it.

Most of those moments aren’t going to make the newspaper. Students probably won’t remember every assignment, every equation, or every discussion.

But they will remember how to work through something difficult. How to communicate. How to work with others. How to keep going when something doesn’t work the first time.

Those are the things they will take with them when they leave us. The big moments make high school memorable. But I think it is all those little moments in between that really prepare our students for what comes next. And there are a lot of really good little moments happening every day at Boulder City High School.