I am totally disconnected from my normal tasks - grading papers, planning, doing house work. Went to sleep at around 8 for 3.5 hours, then headed to Union Station to catch a 3:15 AM train to NYC for Netroots New York, where this afternoon I am leading a panel on privatization of education.
I dozed for most of the way up, so my biological clock is somewhat discombobulated, but that still does not prevent my normal process of Saturday morning reflection. Only this morning it is different, and not merely because I write this sitting on the floor outside the auditorium where the opening plenary will occur, ostensibly within the hour.
We have a 3-day week starting Monday, before breaking for the holiday. I really do not want to start a unit, break for 12 days, and expect my students to remember much when they come back. So I am doing different things.
One of which is taking time to let students explore how we can change what we are doing in order to make it more effective for them.
Let me explain.
This year I have no bad kids. That is, I have no one obnoxious, no one who is for me a discipline problem, a class disrupter. I have some who are lazy, I have a few who don't care, but compared to previous years, that is nothing. It is one reason I increasingly think this would be a good year to end my career in the secondary classroom.
But this year the students I have are the least prepared I have ever had. In many cases they lack the kind of background knowledge one would have expected because they have not had meaningful social studies instruction until they got the 1st half of American History last year as 9th graders. That is a direct result of the narrowing of the curriculum to meet adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind. They have had so much of multiple choice tests that their writing skills are weak. So is their ability to synthesize, to go beneath the surface of an issue. They know neither how to take notes nor to study. As a result, many are struggling, especially those in my college-level Advanced Placement classes. Normally by Christmas break I expect my 10th graders to be getting close to be able to function at a college freshman level in my course. Not this year. They still need much more support. And they panic over how I have been assessing them, which has been trying to give them the experience of what they will undergo on the AP test in May.
So we have been talking and exploring, and we are changing.
We are going to experiment. For one thing, each of my four AP classes will decide together with me how we will explore any unit. And we will begin that exploration by my giving them the multiple choice questions I have been using as an end of unit assessment. They will take it as a pre-test, look up and correct their answers on their own, and then decide how we proceed to fill in the gaps. Some classes will do more work in small groups. Others may choice to do simulations to try to understand in greater depth.
In one way this is exciting - they are more involved in directing their own learning. In another way it is intimidating - I may have four completely different preps, which means more work. But the latter will be offset because I am also going to change how I assess, with them taking responsibility for self-evaluation.
This brings me to the point of this reflection. Perhaps it is because I am likely not to be in this school next year that I am willing to take far greater risks and give my students far more freedom. Perhaps it is because honestly what I have been doing has not been working the way it did in the past, and that is unfair to the students. I understand that as a result performance on the AP test may not even approach last year's high level, but I don't care. My students have not been as engaged as I need them to be, so I have to change to meet them where they are, before I can cajole them into going outside their very restricted comfort zones.
This approach is not something that easily fits into the way we are currently doing educational policy in this country. I don't care.
When people find out I am a teacher, their next question is almost always "what do you teach?" My answer is always the same - I teach students. I have a curricular responsibility, but that is less important than the individuals before me. I have, I realize, not been courageous enough in following my own instincts on how I should teach. Oh, I am far from being a conventional teacher, but I am also not fully where I could be. For whatever time I may have left in the classroom, I can think of nothing more important that to have the courage of my convictions, and a complete commitment to the best interest of my students.
Today I am leading a panel on privatization in education. When the profit motive starts to dominate education, we restrict the opportunities for our students in a way I find unacceptable. Perhaps that also influences my thinking about how I should teach. I want to demonstrate that a focus on students, an insistence on having them take ownership of their own learning, is a far more effective way of having them learn how to learn, - and that lesson is surely more important than any factual information they might be required to recall on external tests.
An unusual Saturday morning. I have a realization. I can write it down, and share it. But now I must turn to other things, and let this smolder beneath the surface, perhaps next turning to it when I take a train back tonight.
Don't know it this makes sense to readers. It makes sense to me. So as is my wont, I thought I would share.
Enjoy your Saturday.