Struggles and Reflection

I wish that I could always have great days as a teacher.  Like pretty much every other teacher out there, I love coming home feeling like I've made connections with my kids and that everything just clicked that day.  Truth be told, I probably have these kinds of days more often than I realize and even if they aren't perfect, there are still a lot of good things that happen that make everything worthwhile.  On the flip side, though, I have the occasional bad day.  These are the days when I feel like I'm the one who failed... maybe due to lack of planning, or patience, or something that just wasn't there the way it needed to be.  These days are pretty tough to take.

After our recent Teachers' Convention, I walked away feeling that I should at least be focusing more on making connections with course outcomes and helping students have greater clarity regarding my own expectations for them.  I came to school on Monday and spent time talking about the need to be equipped to solve the problems and challenges that we will be facing for what remains of the year.  I used 'The Witness' to demonstrate how frustrating it can be when you don't really know how to go about solving problems and how much easier and fulfilling it can be once we know what we need to do.  We then transitioned to the Grade 8 Language Arts Program of Studies and the curricular outcomes found there and got groups started on trying to make more sense of them.  I felt like most kids got what I was trying to say, and I looked forward to the further reflections that would be coming out of our revamped blogging.

Today did not quite go the way I had planned.  While I won't say that the day was a total loss (we still got our work done), it was one of those days that left me feeling like I let myself down.  In this case, I was starting to feel that perhaps my own lofty ambitions were getting a little too far ahead of what I could reasonably expect my students to grasp.  I can sometimes be less patient than I ought to, and it is not unlikely that I was slightly less-than-welcoming of some legitimate concerns and questions than I should have been.  I kind of hate when I do that.

Failure and opposition can definitely be tough to take but more often than not, though, this is when I'm at my most reflective.  I don't say this to brag or to boast or to show off how contemplative and virtuous I am.  I mean to say that being knocked down a few notches reminds me of just how much I can't do on my own.  A little humility helps me to more effectively connect with others for support and look just a little bit harder for what I can do better.

Easier said than done to be sure, but a necessary step in this journey we find ourselves on.

The Plan For Tomorrow

I've been a stickler for good spelling since my time in elementary school when I was locked in a perpetual battle for spelling supremacy with one of my best friends who would always beat my by one or two points on our regular quizzes.  I guess in a lot of ways I've continued to feel that this matters and should be emphasized as a valuable skill.

Sticking to the theme of making connections, I'm going to try to have a little more fun tomorrow as we shore up our writing skills.  I remembered on my drive home reading about the efforts of a class in Brazil as they attempted to correct that they found in a variety of social media posts.  A brief write-up can be found here.

I've already sent out a request for a list of celebrities and popular figures from my classes.  We're going to get set up with correcting some of the mistakes that we can find, and maybe letting our 'friends' know ever-so-politely where some improvements could be made.

Now we just need a hashtag.

Mock House of Commons Debate

Feel my Bearded Fury!!

So.  I finally began our debate on the school's dress code today.  Each student in the class gave a brief statement in support of their party's general position, followed by open debate.  I won't lie... I wasn't really sure what to expect.  Planning for a debate is pretty tough to do because you don't really know what points are going to be brought up or how much people are going to buy in.  I can honestly say, though, that I was very impressed with a good portion of the class.  Not only were they reasonably well informed on the issue, but they were pretty engaged in the whole process.

And it didn't hurt that we had some pretty sweet 'mic drop' moments in the debate.

The plan was to be finished today but we ran out of time and there were lots of hands waiting to jump in.  We are extending the debate into tomorrow.

More to come.

~Mr.T