What we do is so emotional. We are just squirming around on the cutting edge of this change, trying to keep our balance and often failing. We have such difficult interactions with our colleagues. The essense of our work is in such deep conflict with the way things are done now.
As emotional as the poster discussion was for me (I know I know – I lost sleep over a discussion about what kinds of posters to put up in my classroom), I learned a lot from that discussion. Jody put the hammer down on the verb list thing – I got that we don’t need such a poster. Jody and Laurie hammer a lot of truths into this group and keep us on the straight and narrow when the wind threatens to blow our boats into the sky.
I shouldn’t have tried to re-invent the wheel on the posters. I’ve had a great balance and class-starting routine for years, so why change it? I do, however, request that we decide if the DPS 200 HF list is the best one to use, and what about the question of how many words on the wall?
In my opinion the most important thread here from May, the ACTFL three modes, has slowly over the course of this year been supplanted by one even more important – simplicity. Here, in an absolutely crazy part of the year, I am most concerned that, unless we consciously remember to keep things simple and focus on best practices in delivering CI to our kids, many of us are going to bite the dust in overwork and confusion if we aren’t already.
Paul and Laurie sent in a few examples of what we do on a daily basis that reveals imbalance. That list from only two teachers should be enough to convey that we may want to keep this beautiful concept (indeed, this beautiful word) – simplicity – at the forefront of our discussion as we set about to end the year and think about what comes next. Here are those examples from Paul and Laurie:
– Promethean board
school website with oral reading matched to the story, constant communication with classes
– keeping up with homework
– keeping up with students on plans
– generating stories, working in the novels
– getting the World Language Games going
– creating interesting media rich culture presentations
– finding good songs to sing, teaching sign language
– assessment
– attending to mountains of email
– emailing colleagues/admins/parents and filing the results
– cleaning out the files of stories
– cleaning out the files of quizzeslocating YouTube urls and saving them and updating them
– screening YouTube and other media for objectionable content
– creating PP and SB/Promethean files and maintaining those files
– maintaining photo and image files
– using and maintaining a gradebook system including keeping up to the minute grades
– providing copies to students weekly
– posting them to the district-parent access site
– understanding the ever-changing “files” jpeg, MP4
– utilizing some sort of vocal/aural system i.e. Dropbox or Google Voice
– clickers
– ipadish devices
– designing and implementing the district required number of student-computer-use-in-the-grant-funded-computer-lab – lessons per marking period’
– using grade-tracking and evaluation systems (and relearning one every 3 years when the district changes systems) – creating written reports about the results
– not to mention written reports on exactly how we are using technology for the technology committee
I would add:
– pointless meetings
– trainings with P.E. teachers
– writing sub plans
– reading the reports of sub plans, which make no sense
– parents nights
– parent phone calls
– coaching
– calling roll
This is a good place to again put a link to the Merton quote: