It is a difficult thing to do: reflect on our failures, not our joyous moments but our frustrations and anxieties. Today, being a day of celebration of our freedom and independence, I decided to spend some time in a quiet place, reflecting on my past year of teaching. I have posted several posts on "the year in review" but they were of our classroom successes. The activities that were both great learning experiences and fun. I know with certainty, however, that there were many many missteps, misadventures and fiasco's. I recognize them and will use them as a source of growth migration, yet I rarely document them publicly. I suppose that is due to the fact that writing them down makes them real, permanent fixtures of my past. I am an educator and am in a constant state of augmentation. I also am a radical and try crazy things, many of which do not work out as planned.
In a student-centered classroom there are plenty of opportunities for students to take the lead, and because of this, there are a lot of "epic fails." I rarely plan out a lesson from beginning to end, I am not a structuralist or planner. I am a doer. When I enter my classroom in the morning, lights off, quiet and dark, I look at the board, objectives written the day before, and decide how I can change them to fit the student-led model. This backfires at times, but not as much as one would think. I ask a lot of my students. More often than not they excel and adapt to anything I throw at them. Unless, in my mind I see something and try to implement it and my students do not have the same vision. But, rather than fret over the fact that a makerspace activity became a poster and paragraph or a debate became a think-pair-share I go with the flow; the flow set by my students. They come up with some ideas I would never have thought of that occasionally do not work. But, we give them a shot because generally it leads us to a different way of doing things.
My biggest bungles and debacles occurred when I lost sight of the big picture. When I let myself become too regimented and structured. On those days, where I was tired and didn't think things through, we often hit a wall and got trapped, Many times we had to try again the next day. If I came off nonchalant about the lesson, students did not commit to it. If I was not energetic and upbeat when things got difficult or challenging, students gave up. So I learned quickly to just laugh, a lot, aloud. To "laugh in the face of danger...ha..ha...ha." When I took these errors in judgment as just that, a sidetrack, an obstacle, so did my students. I am far from being a great teacher. I see myself as a teacher who wins more than she loses. Inspires her students when a stalemate is imminent. I get dirty with my students so when any experiment goes awry I accept the blame. I never want my students to feel they have done something wrong. I admit defeat. I never expect my students to succeed the first time, although some of them do, I merely expect them to learn. Failure is a hard pill to swallow, even more so for gifted students. But, I make sure they do. The classroom goal breaks down several times a week. Students look at me like I am crazy every day. But, they grow as students because they are faced with decline and collapse.
What I need to do to improve next year: stay focused, I tend to lose track and go off on tangents. Have a forum for pod-casting and blogging (You Tube and Blogger) to give more control over to students. I have to slow down and not try to do something new and different every day. I like to keep things fresh and spontaneous and this gets very exhausting, students love it, but it takes a lot out of me and then I lose steam and thus my students lose energy and we get into a mode of struggles and setbacks. Finally and most importantly, I need to collaborate with my team more. This is my main focus of next year. I do not always get along with one of my team members, this person literally loses her mind because I am so radical, I get chastised a lot and then lose my confidence. I need to share my ideas, expect they will not be accepted and try my best to stay open-minded. Mindful. I admit I lost mindfulness when it came to my team. This I feel bad about. But, after a summer of mindful reflection I know next year I will be a stronger teacher and better role model for my students and colleagues.
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