So there has been a lot on twitter by my fellow educators about their one word that will be their focus for 2016. I definitely want to write more so I thought it'd be a good kick off for the year. My word is CHANGE. And while most of the change is for me, I think change will be there for my students as well (both past and future now).
For me personally and professionally, the change is huge. My family has moved cities, I've had to leave a school I really liked for a new one and we've downsized temporarily while we sell our house and save up a bit into basically a 2 bedroom apartment with 2 kids and 2 dogs. And done all of that within the last two weeks of the 2015. Fun times. I'm also changing subjects as I'm going from teaching AP level to mostly standard/academic (lowest level). And after one day at my new school I see that this is going to be a bigger change for me than I realized, and potentially a big one for my students too. I've come in during the last week before finals taking over for three classes that apparently didn't have a great teacher (according to the students to who knows) and a month's worth of substitute teachers. I only have them a week, but it was staggering how little some of the students cared or even attempted to do any work. My school has laptops for every student, and I'm not even in our district's system yet, so I really was teaching with both hands behind my back. So I had a couple things I could have them do, and really today was more for me to observe and see where the next four days are going to go. For my seniors, I can work with them, most realize they gotta get through this course, and senioritis hasn't completely taken over yet. But my freshman civics class was something else. And I'm trying really hard to A) not compare these students to my former ones because that's not fair and B) to not hold it against these kids because it seems that their original teacher checked out on them in early November, and they had subs for all of December. They're used to being able to not having to any work, to being able to be on their phones, or play games on their computers, and no one ever established any kind of rules with them. I can't try to completely shock the system, since it's only four days now, and I do need them to trust me a bit so I can at least get them prepared for their finals. So if we can all survive the week, victory for me, and I really hate that mentality but I've never felt as frustrated and helpless in a classroom as I did today (more on that in an upcoming rant/blog post).
So once I get my new class, I think I really need to change things up for these kids. Many of them are used to having their macbooks and that constant stimulus of their phones, etc all through the day. I know and embrace the push and use for technology, but I think I'm definitely going to have to find a better balance than what I've seen so far. Also, especially going to block schedules, I have to change the way these students work. There needs to be less downtime, quick transitions, timed, organized, etc. That'll be a bit different for me, since I could get through a couple things and offer plenty of time with AP, there was so much to cover, I could easily assign somethings that would take a majority of class. But I know even then, I was guilty of sometimes having work that some students flew through and they had the end of class to do other things. Now with an extra 30 minutes, I really have to be deliberate with what I do, and more important what they students do. It can't just be simply, do A, then B, then C and let them go to work. I definitely want to get more groupwork, more discussions, bring some of the AP things that I did and cater it to my new students, but push them change the way they've learned. I think with the block scheduling, there is a greater tendency to get caught up and fall behind the pacing and then it creates a mad scramble at the end of the year to "oh crap here's 50 years of history in 2 days." If my students are used to dragging through units and chapters, then they'll have to adapt, not that I live and die with my pacing, but for history, if we don't cover the modern history, in my opinion, all the stuff we learned is useless. I don't want students to learn world history because they have to, I want them to care about other cultures and better understand how the world got to where it is today, and more importantly for them, how does our country and culture fit into it. It's a globalized and interdependent world, but if the students don't get to see and learn that, what's the point. That's something I try to push every chance I get, but it's important to cover the here and now as well, not just the Ancient and "boring."
So I'm ready to embrace the change for 2016, and hopefully my students will as well. Or it could be a long spring. We'll hope it all works out okay...oh yeah and sell our house soon so we can move back into something bigger than an extended stay suite will be nice too. (Could be worse, the price is right for it and it'll for now)
Until next time, thanks for reading as always.
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