Happy Teacher New Year!

Yay, SUMMER - sleeping in, trips to the pool with my daughter, trips to the lake and even to the beach (which is impressive, since I live in Colorado). This season often baffles non-teachers. I've been asked "What do you do all summer?" or "Aren't you gonna teach summer school?" For teachers, or at least for me, summer is an extended New Year's Eve, a time of celebration and relaxation, but also a time of reflection on the previous year's practice and a time for resolutions and plans for the year to come.

As I reflect on 2015-16, I realize that despite every intention of transformative teaching practices, my growth as a teacher (and my students' experiences) have been limited by some of my own bad habits. Fifteen years as a classroom teacher (trained in Madeline Hunter/direct instruction) has given me some deeply ingrained habits that are hard to change. They weren't bad habits when they started, they helped me be the most effective teacher I could be with the tools of the time, but now that my middle school science class is 1:1, I find these habits are holding me back and I am making some Teacher New Year's Resolutions to try and change them.

Bad Habit #1: Being the biggest attention-seeker in the room
One of my biggest successes this year was a #PBL unit where students designed human body board games. It was great to see my students engaged and willing to work. I found my students asking for permission to start /run an errand/do research even before class started. Bad habits kicked in, though, and I quickly trained my students to sit and wait for attendance & announcements before they could begin. Did I just need my daily dose of whole-class attention, or the illusion of control? Why was I putting the brakes on student learning?
Resolution #1: #notalkwc
Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) has inspired me to take this challenge, to run my class as much as possible without talking to the whole class. Talking is really not the best way to deliver instructions or get class feedback. I am reworking my class procedures to support this. Instead of training kids to wait for announcements, these will be posted digitally. Instead of calling for attendance, I plan to greet students at the door or in small groups to take attendance and to check in more personally.

Bad Habit #2: Teacher Separation
Almost every teacher has it, the teacher corner, maybe yours is even a teacher fort. My desk, an industrial 1950's metal behemoth was morphing into just such a creature. Even with a laptop and a 1:1 classroom, I found myself sitting in my corner, away from my students to work for a few minutes during class. I had to, because that's how I set it up. All my important papers, my printer, my class phone, my charger, all lived on my desk, which was clearly a no-student zone.
Resolution #2: Ditch the desk
I moved important supplies into a handy cupboard and left a nice note on my desk for our custodians, "Not needed next year." Phones and printers will be accessible but by students as well as myself. My teacher corner will be a mini-makerspace in my classroom. Thank you to my friend and colleague Cindy Skinner (@cgskinner) for having the foresight to take this leap a couple of years ago and inspiring me to do the same.


Bad Habit #3: GradeMonster
The things that still frustrate me the most seem to stem from my traditional grading policy. My resentment and frustration at spending much of my weekend "catching up" on grading that feels meaningless and my discussions in the teachers' lounge about how the kids just don't seem to get it, or suddenly seem to care right before the end of the quarter.  Most of all, I have often been disappointed in my students' perceptions of themselves in relation to grades. After every grade it was as if they had been sorted mysteriously by the sorting hat in Harry Potter and accepted their fate with varying levels of emotion, but very few of them went back and asked: What mistakes did I make? How can I do better? What did I do well? They have instead been trained (by me) to accept their lot and move on.
Resolution #3: Revised grade policy
I am still working on this one. I don't feel I can go totally #gradeless within the culture of my school. Parents, students, coaches and other teachers are well trained to be grade hawks, watching our online grading system zealously. Our grading system even sends alerts every time a grade is entered. I do hope to distinguish between formative assessments and summative assessments in my gradebook, and come up with other ways to track and address non-compliance, which is often what causes students to fail my class. Most importantly, students will be involved in the assessment process, helping to determine their own midterms and final grades, with evidence-based reasoning, instead of a mathematical average.

My wish to other teachers during this extended New Year's Eve known as summer vacation, is to rest and celebrate and enjoy, but also to reflect and have the courage to change. Happy Teacher New Year!