Glows
This is some of the stuff that went well — skip if you’re here to revel in my failures.
Journals: I compiled journal entries into a booklet that I kept in the classroom. Students took them more seriously than any prior journal system I had used, knowing that they had been prepared carefully and would be read with scrutiny. Q2 journals will refine skills from Q1.
Parent unit: In English 11, we read excerpts from some of the best non-fiction books available in our library: Educated, Hillbilly Elegy, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Between the World and Me. Last year I started my classes with Raisin in the Sun, and they were not captivated by it, unfortunately. With the parenting excerpts, the students were engaged, some of them enjoying the texts so much they wanted to read the whole thing on their own time. It made the act of writing argumentative papers a little less arduous than I expected. It makes me want to experiment with more curated units that offer excerpts of texts rather than endeavoring to read a whole big text as a class.
Groups: I started the year with rows. I’ve always enjoyed that structure and the inherent focus on me. My co-teacher, who is of a more modern and less sage-on-the-stage style of instruction, suggested switching to groups. It worked well, especially for some of my larger E10 classes, where sitting in the front of the row can be stressful for some students and sitting in the back can be an invitation to zone out.
Juggling club balls: I love that more than thirty students show up every time we host juggling club in the front of the school. It presents a logistical issue, though: what are they supposed to juggle? Students could be tasked with purchasing a set of juggling balls, which would run you between $15-25, but so many students are just passing through with a genuine curiosity to learn – why limit them by imposing financial burdens?
We made these really crummy duct tape juggling balls, which were better than nothing, but only slightly. I did some research and learned how to make juggling balls with rice and balloons and old plastic shopping bags. We now have so many I need a large chest to carry them around.
Staying healthy: I have not gotten sick at all this quarter. If you don’t think this is an accomplishment worth celebrating, walk down the hallways of our school and revel in the symphony of wet coughs, sneezes, and sniffles. I think it was an accomplishment to be present and healthy in the first quarter.
Song of the Week: It’s a hit. Students enjoy it – requesting spots for future weeks. I love the accumulation of songs that are creating an additional border around the bulletin board. That it serves no instructional purpose but is done every week is exactly the reason I think it’s successful.
Capitalization one-pager. Some excellent art from this activity, and a pleasant way to have students review rules that are tedious but necessary to know if you want to appear functionally literate.
Grows
This is the stuff that could go better. The first step is admitting there’s a problem!
Animal Farm – I’m teaching this across four classes, reading it entirely in class. It’s a challenging book, in the sense that it’s not young adult and not tailored specifically to a teenage audience — it’s not a big collection of rhyme-less poems tied by a loose narrative and parading as a mature book. It’s not that. Animal Farm has big paragraphs, an ironic narrator, a plot that moves swiftly and requires the reader’s attention. But it’s imminently readable for 10th graders – indeed, it’s commonly taught in middle school. But it’s not a hit with my students. Transitioning to reading it during class provokes groans. I’d say a third actually do like it and are afraid to admit it too loudly, a third are indifferent and accept whatever book they’re tasked to read, and a third very much don’t like it. But is there any text that would please that latter third? The good teacher doesn’t take such a dismissive attitude, and endeavors to have their students read widely and often, which we hope to do with our Chopped Stirred and Blended Unit in Quarter 2.
Score sheet – I wanted to record a score at the end of each class. I made a rubric. The thinking was…I’m not sure what the thinking was, exactly. I wanted consistent data across all my classes that I could then compare against other criteria. Days of the week, phases of the moon, things like that. Did they have any effect on student behavior?
I was good about recording scores, but the problem soon emerged: most classes didn’t really fluctuate too drastically. Once we developed a routine and a rapport, it was rare a class scored lower than a 7.5/10. If all the classes are pleasant and mostly attentive, then why bother writing it on the big score tracker? I couldn’t bring myself to use it as a type of positive-behavior-incentive — it seemed counter to the spirit of just observing and recording data. So I never officially explained it to the students…and those who did ask were nonplussed by what I told them.
Instead, I’ve been inspired by my son, a first-grader, to adopt a student-of-the-day approach, using a similar spreadsheet for each class that has a sticker pre-loaded and ready to bestow upon the “star student” or whatever. I still need to figure out what the designation will be. The components have been made, though. The sticker art is designed by students from each specific class.
We’ll see how this goes.
My notes / Schoology – I have a very elaborate daily agenda. Very busy.
I think I’m going to keep this, but instead of making it a running document, I’m going to place it in a folder for each week in Schoology. I empathize with students who have to navigate the different Schoology styles of seven different teachers. There is no prescribed method of organizing your Schoology. When one student expressed frustration that she had trouble finding stuff for my class, I asked her (very politely) to show me an example of a class that is better organized. She did, and it was indeed better than mine. I will be modeling mine after it for this quarter. Schoology still sucks, by the way.
Food pantry drive – There was a pitiful amount of donations for the Food Pantry drive, despite a FACEtime lesson, an add on the announcement, and running digital slides throughout the hallway. I’m not sure how to get the word out more effectively, unless it involves printing physical sheets and posting them everywhere. The other issue was that most students straight up did not care. My own homeroom students had a very blithely dismissive attitude toward the food drive – the sort of attitude that goes beyond self-centered teens and just makes you throw your hands up and wonder what you’re even doing here. I’ll try to make a more emphatic push for donations next year.
Juggling club balls – they’re such a hit that some students have been taking their custom-issued juggling balls and practicing during instructional time in class. I’ve heard multiple stories of frustrated teachers telling students to put them away. A good example of solving one problem and creating a new one.