Photo credit: CrazyFast via Flickr Yesterday I was an administrator. Today I am a teacher again.This year was a tough year for me. It's why I haven't blogged much. It's tough to figure out what you want to say when you're trying to figure out what your job is supposed to be. It's also tough when, once you finally get a handle on your job, you realize that in order to do what needs to be done to advance student learning you'll have to do it by repeatedly asking forgiveness rather than permission, by sneaking around behind the backs of the very people who should be supporting you.
That's not the environment in which I choose to work. So I chose to be a teacher again, where I feel like I can make a difference.
I'll be teaching AP Environmental Science, regular Environmental Science, and Biology. The AP will be a new challenge for me, but I am ready to take it on. In fact, I have set a few goals for myself for this next school year, in light of everything I have learned during my year-long administrative excursion:
- The school at which I will be teaching is not 1:1, so I will have to make some adjustments in that area. I still plan on using Edmodo as my learning management system as well as assigning activities that will use online web tools in order for students to demonstrate what they know, understand, and are able to do. I also still plan on having a classroom website so students and parents can have access to the curriculum online. However, doing my daily openers from that website, doing exit activities in Edmodo, and some other online activities will have to be paper-based again.
- I would still like to implement a standards-based grading system for my Biology and Environmental Science classes at the very least. I think I may have to make more compromises with this system than I normally would at first until I get a handle for what the community will tolerate as far as grading for proficiency rather than how many points students have accumulated. I will have to work on what form this grading system will take on during what remains of the summer.
- I want to really focus on relationships, relevance, and rigor - in that order.
- Now that I have helped facilitate the start of NGSS implementation at one school, I am eager to actually put it into practice at my new school. The primary focus for this will be in my Biology classes. I'm sure that it will be full of ups, downs, wrong turns, and detours, but that's standard operating procedure when you're trying to implement something new (especially when we have no idea what the assessments look like yet).
I know that the year ahead will be interesting, especially after being an administrator has broadened my view of education beyond the four walls of the classroom and given me more perspective on situations and ideas than I ever had before. However, I think it has made me more focused on students than ever. I'm ready to move forward.
Here's to having a good year-and being able to do my job the way it was meant to be done.
