People who comment that teachers only work 8-3 five days a week with summers off obviously don’t know any teachers! (That’s a whole other post.) Anyhow, Friday nights have become one of my major planning times, often staying until 9:00 at night. Quite often I get together with one of my colleagues, Mrs. Tautkus. Yesterday we stopped by Taco John’s for a quick bite to eat. The young man at the counter greeted me with a smile and I couldn’t help but notice the button he was wearing. It read: “I’m New. I’m Trying.”
I chuckled and imagined myself wearing that same button at school. Although this is my tenth year in education, I continuously find myself saying “I’m new at this. I’m trying.” Education is all about trying new things, changing what isn’t working, improving what is, meeting the diverse needs of students. This year, as every year, is filled with a long list: going deeper with formative assessment, improving my questioning skills, mentoring a student intern, bringing two nationally known artists to our school for the Artist in Residence program, experimenting with how project based learning looks and sounds in first grade, discovering possible hero stories, taking on recycling projects, trying my hand at blogging, and much more. Things don’t always go as planned. It isn’t always neat and tidy. Things don’t always work out. It isn’t always comfortable. However, I’m learning and my students are learning.
I have a feeling even after 25 years of teaching, I’ll still be saying “I’m new at this. I’m trying.” What things are you trying this year? How is it going? I would love to hear from all you brave people trying new things.
Now, if anyone knows where I get one of those buttons...
“It is alright to try and fail, but don’t fail to try!” –unknown
Being a student intern most things are new and I am always trying things out. One new thing that I am trying is Daily Pages. The students have 10 minutes to write everyday about anything and everything. It is not graded and they have the option to turn it in or not. It has helped me establish a better rapport with some students and seems to be increasing their writing fluency. So far it has gone better than I ever expected.
ReplyDeleteCary, I tried the "writing workshop" as taught to us by Claudia Little - my kids loved it. We didn't get past the first step of sharing with only one partner, but it worked very well. I think it worked so well because they only had to write for 6 and 2 minutes. Next year I will expand to the next step. It will be easy because I will have the same group of students!
ReplyDeleteI too will always be a, "I'm new, I'm trying" teacher!
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