I know the week's not over, and it was a short week, but (before I lose all these thoughts) I want to write a little bit on how I feel I've evolved as a teacher over the last week. My kids seem to be turning into 7th graders lately. Ever since Christmas break, they've been much more moody and some have given me some attitude. Not serious problems, but its really disrupted the great flow we had going the whole year. Some of my best students are turning into some of my most difficult now, so it's been frustrating and testing.
I had a great discussion with an awesome mentor of mine, Michele. Whenever I need advice, she's always there with something amazing. I don't know why she's not still in the classroom, because she seems to have the perfect answer for any problem I have. She gave me some great advice on how to handle certain situations with my hormonal students (I asked her about situation after situation...what would you do if...) and also some things about being a teacher in general. I've tried my best to put it into practice this week, keep a positive attitude, laugh, lighten up problematic situations with students with a little bit of joking around, and trying to never show that old-school strictness that makes school no fun at times. I've tried that already, and it just doesn't work. I hate to see other teachers doing that because students don't respond positively to it. If it's you against the students, you're never going to inspire them or teach them anything of real value - it's a waste of time. Michele tells me it's all a big game, and you are the game master. You always win.
Another huge success I've had this week was in my lesson planning. I know this sounds ridiculous, but this week was the first time I've really truly planned ahead for the next week. I've been using a weekly planning document, which I've used to plan more than a week ahead in science. It's really helping me to see the connections between things and the progress I've made, as well as what we need to get done with the time we have. I was planning day by day before and it was just so hard to keep up with. Now I'm really thinking ahead and it feels great. Another huge reason for this success has been the collaboration I have been doing with a fellow science teacher. One of the 6th grade science teachers left last year before Christmas and the new one started after the break. It has been amazing working with her - I've been interested in collaboration since I started here but just never had the right people to do it with. They simply weren't interested and didn't see the benefit of it. We shared videos and such, but we never really planned together. That's what I'm getting to do now - we're sharing ideas every day and planning ahead weeks in advance. We're looking at our standards first - what we need to teach - and making our plans based on that. It's so much easier to teach when you know exactly why you're teaching it. It was more vague before - we didn't really focus on the standards. I hope we can continue to make progress through this year and into the next.
I taught some really great lessons this week. I feel like we learned more in the last two days of science then we ever have since I started teaching. The kids have been great when we do science and they are up for anything. I've enjoyed teaching the lessons (we even did a convection lab!) and I'm excited for what's coming up. How can it get any better than that?
