#ShareTheMess, Late January Update

I’ve had two of the worst teaching class periods in my career this week for the same class period. I’ve been in the classroom for ten years, and used the outdoors as a classroom with students for two year. This Monday and today, I had two of the worst class periods I’ve ever had.

Things that worked in other classes - a task that sparked discussion, a sharing and building of ideas, engagement in a task: they didn’t work. And I didn’t really do anything to make it better.

I say this not because I am looking for sympathy or ideas. I say it rather because we tend to only share the brilliance or the schemes or the breakthroughs with our larger circles of educator friends.

I’m just as guilty of this as anyone.

Not today though. Today I’m sharing the mess.  

Today, I sucked in one class period. I was horrible for the same class period Monday. Kids off task that I couldn’t refocus. The level of discourse dropped. People weren’t focused on ideas.

And I couldn’t fix it either time.

I’ll start the process of fixing Friday, the next time I see this class. And it’ll get better.

However, we’ve got to remember to share the mess. Because education ain’t always perfect. At least it isn’t in my classroom.

Metaphor for my classroom this week
Spilled dog food by Scott Granneman from flickr

#youredustory, Week 4

Prompt: What is the best thing you do in your classroom/school/district/job?

Early in my career I spent too much time directing my students’ learning. On some days in my classroom, I still do it way too much. This is what many teachers know school to be - and what many students and parents have come to expect from school. 

I think that the best thing that I do in my classroom is to get out of my students’ way. After a couple years of experimenting with class structure, I’ve finally landed on a structure for units that I like. We spend some time as a whole class on a unit hook and working through some shared schema that everyone needs to have in order to understand the unit. Much of this work is literacy rich and focuses on conflicting understandings of what happened in the past: pieces of history that ask you to make judgments or don’t necessarily have a right or easy answer. 

Unit structure in my class

After we get through this part of a unit, I get out of my kids way to make room for their enthusiasm. What in a unit interests them? What do they want to learn more about? Where are there contemporary issues similar to the larger picture of the unit?

Tapping into my students’ curiosity has been enjoyable. It has also taught me a lot: I knew very little about the transgender movement before a student chose to do a project on it. I had never heard of the Third Servile War before two students chose to research this - turns out it was fascinating!

Finally, we come back together as a class to look over some of the larger similarities that exist across what we learned separately. This synthesis has been valuable for my students to see across time periods and see the resonance of ideas outside of the narrowly bounded time of a unit. But what has been more valuable, for me, has been to get out of my students’ way and let their curiosity take control of their learning.

My 20time Project

This year is my second year doing 20% time. I did a version of 20time two years ago, but I made so many mistakes we’re not going to count it…

Last year, I didn’t do a 20time project. This may or may not have been a mistake - I’m not sure. I was concerned with overseeing student what my students were working on and helping them when they needed it. However, this year I’m in.

Thanks to a great Voxer conversation, Ashley, Amy, and John helped spawn this idea.

It started with this tweet from John a couple weeks ago:

As I discussed asking my kids these questions and prepping a video of their responses, Ashley and Amy started talking about interviewing some of the students in their district as they prep a 1:1 rollout. And then it hit me: why am I not interviewing my students this year about various aspects of school and splicing them together?

As educators, we say we care about what our kids have to say. Well, how careful are we about making sure we know their opinions? I hope that by doing this project, and sharing it with teachers in my PLN, that we become more aware of what our kids want from and think about school.

The first video - which answered John’s questions - is done, and embedded below.

This leaves me here: what questions should I ask my students this year? Got ideas? Things you’d like to hear some ninth graders in the Bay Area talk about? Toss them in the comments!

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Tangentially related: Kevin Brookhouser's 20time book showed up in my mailbox yesterday. I'm looking forward to reading it. Check it out here.