May Thoughts

This is an interesting time of year for teachers. We are exhausted from fighting on behalf of our convictions of what best practices look like. We are exhausted from trying to implement a method that is still taking form in our classrooms and in the world. And yet, if we are not too exhausted, we are planning for summer training and for a big change in our classroom experience next year.
We are thinking about:
1. Using less English.
2. Using new strategies like vPQA that we haven’t had time to sufficiently study this spring.
3. Working in a less toxic department, even if the only way we can do that is to mentally install a thicker door to our classroom.
4. Further honing our basic CI skills like SLOW and Circling.
Here in May I want to post less articles. It is truly a low point in the year for CI based innovation. My prayers go out to everyone in the PLC who is struggling, which is probably all of us. I’ll wait a few months before trying to take the discussion into what is new in CI.
In fact, since there are as many ways of doing CI as there are teachers, I don’t think that over the next year we should keep looking around for key new strategies. That has been the work of eight years here. We have the strategies and if new ones happen of course we will take them. But as we stand now in our eighth year together here on this blog, we must admit that we have almost too many strategies. And no they won’t be forgotten because I have them all in one big ass book right now.
We only need to make sure that over the summer we get what we already have clear in our minds.
do next year is:
1. TPR a lot more than we ever have in the fall.
2. Lower the amount of L1 we use throughhout the year.
3. Pick whatever strategies that we resonate with and enjoy a 95% Use of the TL winter.
4. Read more in the spring, go for more output, allow projects, or do whatever we have to do so that we arrive at the summer of 2016 rested and happy.