My husband sneakily took this picture of me in my classroom on the last day of school, working away on some last-minute grading and record-keeping. He took it because he wanted me to have some sort of momento of my classroom and last days as a teacher of younger humans. I have since torn any posters or things that are clear evidence of "me" in the room, wanting the new teacher to make the room his own without the vestiges of my crazy ideas about education haunting him.But it is hard to part with a room that's been mine for the last 9 years. Harder than I expected.
My actual last day of teaching came on Wednesday of last week, when I subbed for a teacher on the first day of summer school. They were future 9th graders taking Computer Applications in the summer so they could get ready for the year ahead of them, a year of toting a netbook around with them to every class in their little netbook bags and being required to use the technology as a part of their learning experiences in all classes.
They were rowdy and rambunctious, but I could tell from the outset they were a bright and sharp group. A pre-assessment quickly revealed that they were familiar with Google Drive and social media, but not with the variety of creation and productivity tools available on the web, tools that have been available for years yet of which they have remained unaware for the last 9 years of their education. The concept of good digital citizenship was completely unknown to them. When we made blogs, a lot of them told me a previous teacher had made them make a blog in Blogger before, but there was little understanding of how blogs could be used for thinking, learning, and reflecting.
A lot of them wanted me to give step-by-step confirmation of what they were to do next on the computers, wanting me to tell them what to name things and where to put things. Many of them blew through activities in a race to get them done before anyone else. When I verbally quizzed them on what they were to have learned and all I got was blank stares, I made them do the activities again, and this time with an emphasis on slow and deliberate thinking. I had to get on my usual soapbox about focusing on learning over task completion. I also had to do some serious classroom management, especially when students laughed in my face when I tried to redirect them back on task.
But I saw some students start to take some risks when I refused to micromanage them, digging in to the directions and reading carefully. I saw students using search skills to look up pieces of information and then synthesizing them in order to figure out what it means to be a good digital citizen. I noticed some students engaged in some good discussions, and students helping other students use the netbooks without doing everything for them. I saw some students enjoy watching screencasts of directions, and also enjoy being able to work through a lesson at their own pace (and I enjoyed being free to roam and answer questions while they were watching them rather then being trapped in the front of the room hoping everyone was paying attention). I saw some of them starting to realize towards the end of our 4.5 hours together that this wasn't going to be run like their classes in the past.
In other words, it was a typical classroom experience for me.
I will miss every minute of it.
