A rolling thread where we are teachers

Was it a gogurt? How does a yogurt fit in a pencil case? Poured into the bottom?

I am starting my first big PBL in a few days. Kind of intimidating!

good luck ... YOU’LL NEED IT!!

j/k you’ll be fine

its just i worked at a 100% PBL school for four years and still have PTSD when i see the letters

I’m toeing the dread/anticipate line.

I do a lot of project-based work already, but I keep it pretty buttoned-up and teacher-structured. This new unit is interdisciplinary, month-long, standards based, and requires ~10 different types of student roles. The outcome is more conceptual, and I have NO idea what it’ll be like.

doing new stuff is fun. i am teaching a music appreciation course this semester and, aside from the textbook, have built all my materials and assignments from scratch. it's a lot of extra work but i am really enjoying it. learning a lot too!

it's tempting to wish for a rut in which to relax
i figure that is what summer is for

also it's really only brutal the first time
the next time, at least the framework is there

Was it a gogurt? How does a yogurt fit in a pencil case?

A gogurt, yeah--I didn't realize they had a different name.

http://www.generalmillscf.com/~/media/images/product/product-detail/yogurt/yoplait-portable/42163000-yoplait-simply-go-gurt.ashx

I'd never heard the term "PBL" before--figured that must mean project-based-learning from the subsequent posts. We call it "inquiry" up here. If the movement is 100% in that direction, that's one more reason I'm ecstatic I'm done next year.

It is very much in that direction. In theory it is great. In practice, it's been ... bumpy.

x-post to LL: I have always had to make all of my materials from scratch. It's not by choice, though. My district requires expects extensive personalization/adaptation of all curriculum, and my colleagues are sometimes pretty protective of their materials. Or, their materials are freely shared much more lecture-y than my wont. In short, I've never found resources that are differentiated enough for the classroom I run. In one room I teach G&T, gen-ed, and special-ed inclusion, and most prepared materials have (at best) an "extension question" or a hokey graphic-organizer as supplmental to the orthodox design. Out of 20-25 students, I usually have, say, six to eight different variations running at a time, and at least a few ELLs. I'd say that in an average year I've had to create ~ 300+ pages of new documents. It's exhausting, and I truly don't think non-teachers have any idea of how much work goes into my prep.

This year, though, I started teaching two subjects and the prep got overwhelming. My supervisors have been good and they've been steering me to use lots of materials from tolerance.org, Smithsonian, commonlit, and the Choices program (out of Brown University). There's some great stuff out there, but I would LOOOOVE if somebody had a year-map for my content area(s) so that I didn't have to sequence day-by-day, week-by-week, and semester-by-semester. I used to adore creating new content/new units, but at this point it would be a delight to go back to previous material.

That's something I've always been terrible at (or just plain lazy): differentiation. I do it to a certain extant, but a lot of times it's just "You do this, and you that too, but less of it." (Also, ditto--good luck.)

I'd say that in an average year I've had to create ~ 300+ pages of new documents. It's exhausting, and I truly don't think non-teachers have any idea of how much work goes into my prep.

this is horrifying
300 pages?! every semester?! that can't be helping you deliver individualized instruction.

i have the same issue

i spend so much fucking time making worksheets its ridiculous

it's my fault for always working at charter schools that implement cost-cutting measures like ... not buying curriculum

it's one thing to do it once -- why would you have to do that every semester, or even every year? what is the administration's rationale for requiring this?

i make changes to my materials all the time, but i don't make 300 pages of all new materials every time. that would not leave me time for eating and sleeping and general physical maintenance.

then again i am also a course coordinator and have tp prepare materials for classes i may or may not be teaching
that's another issue though

oops TO prepare

in my case, it's because i'm always teaching new courses - i am authorized in chemistry, physics and math. so when i teach math i tend to get switched around between different levels. and the switch from california standards to common core meant a lot of redesign.

i teach regular and AP chem and physics, and they (college board) redesigned AP chem in 2013 and AP physics in 2014, so i had to redesign my materials. for regular classes i also had to redesign from california to NGSS.

and then on top of that i've been at three different schools in 12 years. the first was 100% PBL with a very high proportion of special ed students. the second was very traditional in a super high-achieving school with very high SES. and now i'm at a 100% free and reduced lunch school with a very high proportion of language learners. so every time i switch schools i have to re-jigger my materials for a new population.

i'm hoping it settles down soon ... but it's kind of been a perfect storm i guess ...

To be fair, I create three hundredish pages per year, not per semester. My school year runs 185+ days, and I create something new at least a couple of times per week, usually 2-3 pages in length. Then I modify and adapt. I’m a big advocate of a student-led classroom, and when I’m roped into a set/previous curriculum I end up feeling like a cart before a horse.

Middle school is really hard to teach, because in the same classroom I’ll have kids reading/writing as college freshman, and kids struggling w/ comprehension on a third grade level. I’ve never found a textbook/curriculum that is interesting enough to engage both ends of the spectrum - but it’s no sweat to make something compelling on my own from ready materials (i.e. why we read Robert Frost and ee cummings and Gary Soto and Amy Tan and Avi and Sandra Cisneros and Judy Blume and Langston Hughes)

The cost of this, though, is that I don’t get to spend a lot of time thinking up creative pedagogies, and my in-room practice has gotten increasingly stale.

i agree with you completely about customizing and the lack of utility of a pre-made curriculum
know what you mean about teaching multi-level classrooms
my mom taught middle school for 30 years and there are extracurricular challenges that no amount of worksheets and handouts could solve

ultimately we all have the same problems -- people expect us to be wizards monomaniacally focused on teaching above all else
i don't think this is fair or reasonable esp considering the compensation, grief, and, who knows, arms training we might need to go through :(

plus everyone thinks they know how to do our job
godspeed, everyone

Hello, thread. I am a) old (early 40s) and ii) an RQT, teaching English at a secondary school. I'm a classic midlife crisis, basically. The job is fucking mental, isn't it? It's a bit like parenthood in that if anyone could actually communicate the day-to-day chaos of it, no one would actually do it. That said, I do love it. Most of it. Well, bits of it.

if anyone could actually communicate the day-to-day chaos of it, no one would actually do it

The disconnect there is why the longer you teach, the more you're inclined to let every new initiative go in one ear and out the other. It's all well-meaning, but most all of it takes place in some fictional classroom that has very little connection to the day-to-day chaos.

Yes, I'm slowly coming to terms with this. I'd no real sense of just how autonomous teachers actually are - how, after a time, it's really you and the chaos. This is still half-formed but... it's a mixture of that and managing what is essentially an always already paranoid teaching subject by which I mean the teaching-ego that's formed in that first, unbelievably intense first year, where one is watched, and critiqued mercilessly, is by design and nurture, self-critical ('the best teachers are self-reflective!') to the point of madness. I still feel that watching eye, even now. That might be just my particular pathology, though.

That's spot-on. After a few years it's just you, the kids, and the chaos; I would guess, in the last 15 years, a principal has been in my room watching a lesson or activity fewer than 10 times--and some of that was the annual 5-year review. It gets to the point where you can't even convince someone you're doing a lousy job when you absolutely know that you are. I was having a nightmarish time last year--wrote about it somewhere in here, I think--and whenever I'd share that with another teacher, that I had no idea at the time what I was doing and wasn't helping anyone, it was always "No, no--you're doing a great job." Some combination of politeness, support, and the shared assumption that merely getting through the year counts for a lot.

time for eating and sleeping and general physical maintenance.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, February 22, 2018 12:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in my experience you can choose one of these 3 (i choose eating)
srsly my health is in shambles but i'm a pretty decent teacher now and im happy

i think it should bother me more that ive put on like 80 pounds the last few years but im still extremely fucking cute so whatevs

That's spot-on. After a few years it's just you, the kids, and the chaos; I would guess, in the last 15 years, a principal has been in my room watching a lesson or activity fewer than 10 times--and some of that was the annual 5-year review. It gets to the point where you can't even convince someone you're doing a lousy job when you absolutely know that you are. I was having a nightmarish time last year--wrote about it somewhere in here, I think--and whenever I'd share that with another teacher, that I had no idea at the time what I was doing and wasn't helping anyone, it was always "No, no--you're doing a great job." Some combination of politeness, support, and the shared assumption that merely getting through the year counts for a lot.

I've been thinking about this a fair bit, amongst general introspection about the madness of the job. We've just had a few snow days which were like a window of sanity. I got to read, which was novel, and sleep relatively well, not dreaming about Y11. But yeah, simply being there is a thing, isn't it? No matter that you feel half-powered most of the time, if not worse.

about to start year #9. im stoked bc i'm going to have a full academic decathlon team and we're actually going to be competitive. i...might be teaching AP? they still havent told me LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL goddammit. im in my last semester of grad school before i graduate in december which means i'll get some of my life back in the spring.

have you ever taught AP before?

the first year is brutal, esp if the course has been recently revamped (mine has)

i'm not sure if i'm going to do science olympiad again this year ... the last two years we have not been competitive and honestly the event as a whole is kind of a drag (in that it's very parent-driven, not that engaging for the kids, and not really structured toward developing scientific understanding, creativity, etc) ... but i am sure i will have some kids come begging for something to buff up their resumes

i already had to tell the kids that want to do rescue committee firmly no because they had been so useless the last two years

well it wasn't a firm no

it was "no until you bring me written plans with deadlines and deliverables for three meaningful student-run service projects", no more "raising awareness" bs

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep-black-students.html

man

been sitting with this article all day, incredibly fucked up

what a nightmare

not the only alternative school out there that's functionally a cult, from what I've heard

I've been keeping a Google classroom page this year--better than the board-created page I used to use (which wasn't bad). I posted a novel-study assignment today: "Joey Pigza - Culminating Task." (Jargon...I rail against it, but sometimes I give in.) The kids--grade 3 and grade 4--love to post responses, some of which kill me.

From V___: "thank you so much for the joey pigza culmination"

Culminate away.

(Can I just post, being a parent, I'm in awe of teachers. Many tell me I'd have been good at it. But since I feel rub as a parent, I'd prob fuck that up too. The chaos description seems apt. What I find most saddening/maddening is the intro of technology/direct communication. So many patents pester the teachers. Question their authority. I myself have never done so. There's a distinct: that's the school/classroom. The teacher gets to decide and apply their rules. I even told teachers: if they are in the wrong, you are in charge. Not I.)

I was looking over some of the stuff I've posted here the past few years and came across the back-on-forth on rubrics six years ago. No better example of how they never settle on anything before moving onto something else. Rubrics are so passé now--it's task requirements and success criteria. ("Co-created," of course.) Our resource teacher--someone I like, and she's helped me at times--is a true believer in all this stuff, I'm most definitely not, so when she asked me a few weeks ago if I knew the difference between the two, the question put me off enough that I made it a point to make up an antiquated rubric instead. (I'm finished this year, so at a certain point, it's like nobody cares what you do anymore. It's a great feeling.) Would bet a small fortune: four or five years from now, the words "task requirement" and "success criteria" will never be heard.

When I started teaching in earnest (ca. ‘03) it was all about “learning opportunities” which now seems both quaint and de rigeur.

i still use rubrics and don't feel shame about it

my students like them too. sometimes i use a checklist to get them ready to turn in an assignment but the grade is determined by the rubric. i hate grading. however, i love teaching.

GRADING, you say?

more like DEGRADING if you ask me!!

Once a year--today was that day--the kids will be working on a math test and I'll take out some chocolate and say, "You guys work on your math test; I'll be sitting here eating chocolate." I'm going to miss that.

<3

I'm on the clock.

Swine! Seriously though, good luck and enjoy those 100-odd days.

(Just for a minute there, I read DeLillo and thought, Don!)

I can't tell you how many times people come up to me on the street and start asking about arcane plot points from Underworld...Thanks; only about 70 of them in the classroom.

Things I will miss, part 83: learning stuff I never knew, in this case what games and sports Ancient Egyptians played (from a grade 4 slide show):

"What the Egypt people played: fishing, rowing, football, basketball, golf, hockey, tennis, swimming...chess, weight lifting, wrestling, long jump and other card games."

i mean i bet there are people in egypt in 2019 who do that