Motivated for the new school year
I’m feeling awfully spry going into the new school year.
I’ve used basically the same course plan for the past three years. My very first year of Human Geography was a disaster, and I thought I would never teach the course again. When I was in the position again years later, I ended up borrowing and slowly modifying district resources through the first semester rather than trust myself. The materials never really sat right, but I realized I wasn't enjoying the trajectory of the course.
Why was I doing this? I knew what I had to do: I locked in and designed my course from scratch, starting with the spring semester, staying barely a day ahead of my students sometimes. It was a mad dash.
Over the summer, I built a plan for textbook reading, weekly quizzes that practiced their test skills (open book notes if they were keeping up on it), and dedicated writing workshops. Then I designed the fall semester of the course with the same mania as I had designed the second semester - dancing a step ahead of the flames.
Two years later, I beat the global average.
But now I want to redesign it. I have been in a fine arts room without proper desks for years, and limited movement. To compensate I moved to a lot of lectures by default, along with assignments or readings on their student devices.
But, now I am in a real classroom. It’s actually a pretty great one with actual desks. And students actually can move. I can fully return back to class discussion and student talk I can actually monitor and hold accountable. And I have the desks oriented toward my white board, instead of not having a white board at all.
I understand that being excited about having a normal public school classroom is incredibly dorky.
So, I’m redesigning major chunks of my course. I’m not throwing the baby out with the bathwater - a lot of my stuff is good after all. But I am re-doing some of what I have them do because, as it turns out, having an active classroom is infinitely better than having to use those fucking student devices.
I’m not cutting out all tech, of course. Their AP tests will be digital, and Stendarr knows that their typing is miserable. Ideally, I can navigate them toward responsible and intentional tech use in the classroom, such as some of my GIS activities.
But all of that also means I can't slack this year.
I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much - but this does feel like good omens.
Thanks for reading.