annnnd…action!

Ready or not, here we go again…

Just about 4 years ago (September 2020 – yep…the ol’ “just get ’em through the year year) I wrote a blog post I called THE INDISPUTABLE JOY OF PREPARING which is a theme I seem to keep cycling back to.

Do I ever get to where I’m going?

This time…maybe yes!

My intention this year is to blog once per week – Sunday because of my role model, Michele Reid – the Superintendent of Fairfax county Public Schools. She writes an awesome community news letter and reflection every Sunday – truly without fail. I can do that. Her audience is a very large audience. My audience is just me…and maybe you. Mind you, I’ve had this intention before, but life…fatigue…work… has repeatedly gotten in the way.

But, I want to clarify my intention this year. I want to write this (again!) for me, as a journal of what I learn in the classroom. Maybe a little bit about what I teach, but more what I learn…observe…feel…experience…create…witness… I know there is something simmering inside of me to personally and professionally grow from my classroom experience and perhaps share it more broadly.

Before I dive in – some pictures! My new classroom is NB-5&6 (NB means North Building, although my understanding is that it is no longer the northest building on campus.) The principal indicated he’d like to rename the buildings with braille & language accessibility, but the first proposal came in at $40,000. That’s a bit much for a financially bankrupt school, I suppose. But anyway – I’m in NB6.

Getting the classroom ready:

The wall at my desk – cheerful, personal. I have a small microwave oven (like just enough for soup or coffee reheat small) and although not pictured, my desk is one that rises to into a standing desk. Yay! I didn’t even ask for that – I’ve tested that it can lift up without knocking things off the wall or pulling plugged in things off. We’re all set, in my corner of the room.

This is the preparing that I love as mentioned in that previous blog. I love the set up.

So other things I’ve prepped for this school year include routines. (side note – I SUCK at routines. I don’t know why. I subscribe…I truly do…really. I concede that routines are great! They make things efficient and predictable and I am going to spend the year arguing that they contribute to the tensile strength of a teacher and a program. This is the stuff of the next blog, but suffice it to say in an era of overused and perhaps misused notions of “resilience” and “grit” – I want to explore tensile strength; understanding it, improving it, cultivating it in others.

So, yah, routines (to improve tensile strength), including my personal classroom routines, routines I co-create with my students to optimize the use of instructional time, my home routine to just keep my shit together and my gym routine to regain my sense of health and well-being. I will journal it all along the way.

While this blog is my archive for lessons learned along the way, PlanBook and my Curricular Pacing guide are the tools I use to help me take next steps. I’ll share more about them in coming blogs. Routines and tools are the key.…

…the key to what, you ask?

Having the right routines and tools in place will help me stay efficient, on track and not in that constant sense of scrambling for the next step, or what has already been covered.

In addition to a 360 look at what tensile strength in teachers and programs might be – what it might look like – I want to look at do-overs.

Do-overs occurred to me when I was proofreading something the other day that I was going to share with someone and in a flash I had the debate in my head….I could backspace and correct, or I could hit the “un-do” or “back” button and re type. Weird, I know. But it made me think about giving feedback, and correction and giving grades. I’ve been mulling over the tidbits I’ve picked up along the way about teaching best practices and how learning works and it all feels so sterile – so not-applicable. Like the trial in the movie Sully, theory doesn’t really take into account what is actually happening in front of you…in the moment, on the fly. And school work and tests are so not helpful unless a student can make their way to the competency…the skill, and in my case, the fluency.

Some of my thoughts come from having to allow students with a “D” to move up to the next level – they didn’t outright fail, but they are not ready for the next level. What is the point of the letter grade if it doesn’t make you stop and take action??? Isn’t the point of learning a skill to get better at it? Arg…so many blog posts wrapped up in this.

Honestly, if I could give a “C” for competent and a “NY” for Not yet, I’d feel like a better teacher.

NY – Not Yet…is a grade I’d like to see offered. (I mean it could stand for “next year” in the case of actually failing. But as this is not the goal, and learning is, NY seems to serve a purpose I’d like to explore.)

This is admittedly a horrifically overwhelming approach.

Essentially it says, I’ll keep grading as much work as you turn in until you’re satisfied with your grade. My teacher friends are banging their heads on their desk right now, I’m sure.

So – this is my big QUEST for this year. Can I figure out how to have my routines/planning/prepping SOOOOOO efficient that I have the headspace to focus on giving my students quality feedback that they can use to improve? I’m thinking this is going to involve tensile strength in me…in my students…and my program.

Can we stay strong under pressure?

Don’t call it resilience or grit, please…we’re going in a different direction. Do you see a difference in the two terms? My buddy ChatGPT gave this first iteration – I didn’t go back for more:

I dunno – I just want more and I’m looking at specifically building in the things that lend themselves to grit and resilience in education (teachers and students, admin and programs, etc) – specifically, intentionally built with tensile strength.

Until next week…c