As my last post may have implied, I have been buried under a dark cloud that has kept me from tackling new projects and meeting new goals. Just doing the “must dos” of teaching and coaching kept me from doing anything beyond those necessary tasks, but I am feeling the rejuvenation of a good break. I am ready to set some new goals for 2023, and as always… I’m aiming high.
I am genuinely so happy to feel like myself again, and though I know tomorrow brings me back into the thick of stress and exhaustion, I am optimistic. These goals are part of my own personal health and wellness goals. In tandem, I truly think I can see a better semester ahead. For my readers, I hope you are feeling a similar breath of fresh air. 2023 is the year we can reclaim our passion and remind ourselves why we do this incredibly important work. As I’ll be telling myself every day, we do something that truly matters every single day.
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I haven't posted since June.
I have not accomplished any impressive curriculum projects. I have not even updated my Teachers Pay Teachers store in months. The reality - which I'm sure all other teachers feel - is that I don't have a single ounce of energy to expend on anything extra. I have nothing more to give outside of my coaching responsibilities and teaching my three classes. I want to create amazing materials for my readers, but there has not been a single weekend when I felt I had the energy for it. I work out 4-5 times a week, and still, I have no energy to do anything beyond the bare minimum. For me, its a rare form of self-punishment to keep myself from being creative or from building new things. But that's where we are at. We are surviving. Checking in for just a second today to share something I am working on.
Last month, I started putting together bell ringer packs to fit each of the 22 learning targets in the AP Language and Composition CED. Each pack includes 9 different bell ringers to suit the learning target, and ultimately, there will be enough bell ringers to fill an entire 190 day course. My plan is to include these in my free resources, but for now, the first 8 packs are available on my Teachers Pay Teacher store. Despite my phone dying, almost missing my flight home, and multiple panic attacks, the AP Reading was… fine. In all honesty, I came into this one bitter, as I felt a little duped into attending the in-person reading instead of reading from home. (Probably more my own fault than anything). It didn’t help that the in-person reading was essentially the same as reading from home. This year we read from computers again - which we’ve obviously done for two years now - but it made the entire exercise of flying thousands of people to Tampa see pretty foolish if we were just going to sit at computers the entire time. My bad attitude plus the previously mentioned surprises made for a rough week. But I made it. Because of the extension of the Reading when we weren't able to finish, we had a unique experience this year. In the last two days of in person scoring, we trained on all three of the questions - something that has not been done in my five years of reading. For me, it was a blessing. I was so sick of reading about ethos, pathos, and logos (more on that later) that switching to Question 3 and then to Question 1 was a welcome change of pace. However, a number of my peers were aptly concerned about the accuracy of scoring when we were being jumped around. Personally, I think it’s a toss up. Like I said, I needed the change so I found myself reinvigorated every time that we switched. I feel my scoring would probably have been just as hindered by the fatigue had I continued with Question 2. But that’s enough rambling commentary (... my kind word for whining). This post is not about my complaints, but about the suggestions and tips moving into another year of AP Lang instruction. The following are the observations I took note of for myself. Some of them are mistakes I saw multiple times that I want to correct next year. Others are harder mindset shifts that I'll be mulling over for the next couple months. Additionally, I want to be very clear that I am in no way an expert, and you should look to the Chief Reader's report (Coming Soon!) for that. These are just a few notes and thoughts I kept for myself as I plan a new year. Notes from the AP Language 2022 Reading
I have 9 total days left of this school year. And I. Am. Ready.
Somehow, I always forget how tired I am at this point in the school year. I slept the majority of this weekend (a luxury, I know!), and I am still completely drained going into the new week. Usually, this time of year, I am pouring my energy into planning for the fall and redesigning my class (again). However, this year, I don't have the juice. (My lack of posts in the last few months can further prove it). It's been a rough year... Stupid TikTok trends, reteaching students how to "school," cruelty-rampant social media, and universal apathy have made it harder than anyone expected, myself included. But I am an optimist. One of my favorite things about teaching is that we get to start over every year: new kids, new course, new content. I love it. In the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about that optimism. Where does it come from? Next Thursday will end my tenth year of teaching, and I am still excited to try new things and grow as a teacher. But I know that isn't the case for everyone. Teacher "Quit"-Tok is making it very clear that many, many educators are throwing in the towel. How can we take the remaining enthusiasm and replicate that across buildings? How do we undo months of fatigue and apathy to remind educators why we do what we do? How can we take the setbacks of COVID and embrace how we learned to adapt and grow? As much as I wish these questions were just a transition to a post about all the great solutions, I have - it's not. They are just the questions that spin and spin and spin through my mind. Now that I am an instructional coach, I feel even more of a responsibility to keep great teachers in the classroom. For me? I just need the ability to try new things and learn as an educator. But how do you reward great teachers? (And for the matter, how do you measure a great teacher?) Again. Just more questions that I have no answers for. I am ready to spend the summer pouring all of my energy into answering these questions, but I am at a complete loss of where to start. (And, in all honesty, it isn't really under the umbrella of my job title). I've just always had the mentality that if something isn't being done, I'll do it myself. How? How? How? I think finding the answers is more urgent than we all realize. Personalization Tip #9Create opportunities for collaboration and connection between students. We had a great week in AP Lang. Really. Despite multiple virtual days, state hockey tournaments, and a flurry of student vacations, we were able to work together on a fun group activity. Because the class is generally personalized by method and pace, most of the time students are working independently. Yes. They chat and enjoy one another's company and work alongside each other, but most of the time, they are working on different items. For that reason, it is really important to create spaces and opportunities where we come together to do something collaboratively. For my current curriculum design, I create these moments at the beginning of each new unit. Not only are students working together, but they are being introduced to the concepts of the upcoming unit. I try to design these activities with an authentic purpose. For instance, as I've posted multiple times, I love creating true crime related activities to engage them in investigation and critical thinking. I have also created activities to connect course material to their daily lives in the form of high school gossip and social media. But mostly, I just want them to do something together and take a break from any feelings of isolation that can come with personalized learning. This year, I have been working to improve those activities that have worked in the past and creating some new opportunities to get the class collaborating on engaging projects. This last week, we tried one of these new ones: a simulation of what the United Nations does. Essentially, I gave students a global issue, assigned them a country to represent, and asked them to work together to draft a shared resolution. Here's an Overview: This multi-day activity is designed to mirror the process of MUN (or Model United Nations) competition on a smaller scale. Students will be assigned countries from around the world and present resolutions for a provided topic of discussion. In this case, the students will act as members of the UNICEF committee to mitigate the problem of child labor around the world. Students will research their country and it’s current practices in regards to child labor, prepare a draft resolution, vote on the top three resolutions, and then enter into a debate with the goal of creating a shared resolution that can win the votes of the member states (USA, United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France). While it ended up being stretched over a few more days than I wanted, I loved the conversations we had as a class. Students did a great job of qualifying their own arguments to suit others and negotiated in creative ways. If you are interested, I have a teaching narrative written out below! Be well, all. After over five days pent up in my house with COVID, I am happy to announce that I FINISHED THE SUPPLEMENT PACKS! In fact, it will probably seem a little controversial, but I'm actually pretty happy that COVID finally found me. This is not to minimize how horrible this pandemic has been for our country, but in all honesty... I needed a forced break.
This year has been trying in new, unprecedented ways already, but the addition of my new position has left me in tears, bitter, and exhausted more than I ever imagined possible. I was forcing myself to go at full speed every second that I was at school, and I was burning out. Badly. While I would not enjoy going back to my first (and worst) days of COVID, I have enjoyed the last few days of quarantine immensely. I made a book list for the rest of the school year. I started organizing my crazy ramblings into a possible table of contents. And I finished the supplement packs I started at the beginning of the year. The heavy, heavy fatigue of COVID has emerged as a metaphor for the burden I'd been carrying around before being forced to stop and take care of myself for a minute. I have never been as physically tired as I was in the first days of my COVID spell, but I would also say I had never been as emotionally and mentally tired as I was leading up to my positive test. As much as it should be a lesson about self-care and perspective, I know I'll go back to school tomorrow with the same over eagerness that will end up in the same burnout. All I can really do is try to remind myself about balance moving forward and do the work that brings me joy (and spend less time on the rest). I am dismally behind in updates about our personalized classroom. Between inclement weather days, end of the semester, and my coaching responsibilities, I haven't had much time to sit down and summarize what we have going on. Apologies. However, amidst all those things, I encountered an issue that I wanted to share. One that I know most teachers struggle with. Particularly, in the digital, device-driven age. Cheating. Personalization Tip #8I don't want to say cheating is inevitable, but... cheating is inevitable. Being proactive is the best you can do. Because I use a self-paced format, student assess at different times. This creates the obvious issue that some kids will complete assessments before others and even get feedback. There isn't much keeping them from sharing their responses with others. And I'm certainly not going to create a unique version of the assessment for each student. As the semester ended, I had a student who was very near failing. In all honesty, she needed to be proficient in the final unit to even pass. I'm sure many of you know that when put under such pressure, students get desperate. All the re-attempts and supports can't do much when a student has placed themselves in a position such as this one. So I guess I wasn't surprised when I saw that her answers were identical to another students. (Like... copy and pasted). My initial reaction was to laugh - seeing as neither response was accurate. Then, I had to consider how to approach it. Giving her a zero would mean failing the entire semester, and there was only one day left. If you've ever been in a similar situation, I am sure you understand the frustration. There were many ways this student could have avoided this situation - possibly failing - throughout the semester. She did not. There was many opportunities in class to get help on this unit. She did not. The strict authoritarian in me is always ready with a "Sucks to suck" response. The human in me just can't. So I revised the assessment to use a new sample essay. Gave the two offenders a specific time to come and re-attempt the assessment. And ultimately, both passed. For the next few days, I obsessed about preventing such behavior in the future. Do I need to lock their iPads down when they complete assessments. Do they need to do all of them in front of me? Do I need to explicitly write when they can and cannot get help from others? While I will be making some changes for the new semester, I came to a clear conclusion. No matter how intentional I am about preventing cheating, there is always going to be someone more determined to cheat. In talking to students in other contexts, they can give me a host of creative ways students cheat - things that I would never anticipate. The thought of combatting all of these possible methods is exhausting to even think about. Instead, my approach has been to be proactive as I can, and vigilant when assessing work. Here are some of the ways I mitigate cheating in a personalized classroom: |
Units 1-5!Just a reminder that I am in the process of creating packs to supplement the College Board unit design. Units 1-5 are posted! Unit 6 is available for early release.
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I'm going to start by being very frank. These have not been good weeks.
Fortunately, it has nothing (as usual) to do with class or the students. Instead, it's been days and days of frustration with what I perceive as a toxic attitude sweeping across teaching at the moment. I don't want to dig into this too deep right now, but my frustration has really been draining me: keeping me up at night, leading to poor choices, and just creating a heavy metaphoric burden.
That said, I am happy to talk about class. Always. :)
Personalization Tip #6
When it comes to intervention, get creative.
Classroom management in a personalized learning environment is something that frightens a lot of teachers away. The thought of leaving students to make their own choices and manage themselves is impossible in some classrooms. While I would argue that personalized learning is possible in any context, self-pacing is one aspect that doesn't suit a class that has high classroom management needs. If possible, however, self-pacing can transform your class.
I'm going to acknowledge the obvious: My position as an Advanced Placement teacher may suggest that the kids I have aren't going to be the ones to create problems, and for the most part, that is correct. However, if you are a teacher of students in advanced classes, I am sure we could share war stories about clever cheating methods, off task behavior, and argumentative questions.
What I'm getting at here is that every classroom has management issues that can be exacerbated by some aspects of personalized learning. Honestly, I feel this is the biggest objection to personalized learning that I hear. Self-pacing (which, I remind you, is just one method of personalization) frightens people away because as we all know... teenagers aren't great at managing their time.
Today, I'd like to share some of the ways I keep students on pace and intervene when needed. Just like I try to give them options and adapt to their learning needs, I do the same with intervention. Some things will work on some students. The same ideas will likely fail on another.
Here are some things I've done in the last weeks...
- Negotiations: I have a group of three boys in my second class that prefer to work out in the hallway in our FTLAs (flexible learning areas). To be completely honest, I know they aren't working all that hard out there, especially when students on an alternate schedule fill the halls. On occasion, I'll float out there to remind them to be on task, but for the most part, I trust that they are working. That said, a couple weeks ago, I found out they were all pretty behind when I checked in. Knowing these three value the freedom to be out in the hall, I struck a deal with them that if they met the next suggested deadline, they could continue to sit in the hall. If not, they would have to stay in the room. Two out of the three met the deadline, and the third (after some friendly heckling from the other two) got caught up within 24 hours.
- Required Time: Our school offers some flexible time in the schedule that I often use as an intervention tool. In class, I will announce a weekly expectation to define who will or won't be required to come to me during that time. This week, I announced the day before our flexible periods (Wednesday) that if they did not submit an item in 24 hours, they would come and do it with me during the flexible time. While I know not everyone has that option, a similar intervention could be before or after school. If students don't come to these required times, I email their parents (which for teenagers is seemingly the ultimate punishment).
- Pinky Swears: Yes. I mean holding up my pinky finger and making students promise to complete something. Last week, I had required a few a couple girls for that flexible time, but they had other obligations they wanted to complete during that time. Each of them promised to get something finished that evening, so I made them pinky swear they were going to follow through. They both did. Furthermore, one of them asked me the following day if she could work in the hallway, and when I asked if she was going to be productive, she immediately put her pinky up. Pinky swears still go a long way with 16-17 year olds, I guess.
- Proximity: I have a group of girls in my last class of the day that consistently distract one another, sit on their phones, and talk too much. In their own words, they've been "in the doghouse" with me. Because there were a couple other pockets of off task behavior, I put together a seating chart for that class. However, as soon as learning time started, they have the choice to move around and the same people gravitated back to one another. Because I didn't want to go back on my word about my expectations for learning time, I simply moved to an empty seat nearby and occasionally reminded them about being focused. I'd give them one look, and they'd immediately defend what they were working on.
So as you can see, different kids respond to different interventions. As the year goes on, I'll see more and more what is going to work and what won't. I know there is validity in consistency - (I mean, I've had my CHAMPS training like the best of them) - but absolute rules and expectations are just plain unreasonable. I do have clear set expectations for when I am lecturing, reading time, or for it we are doing something together, but beyond that, everything is determined by the individual student and situation.
If you walk away from this post with anything, I hope it is the belief that self-pacing is possible and that some flexibility and creativity with your intervention practices can go a long way. The bottom line is simple: different kids need different things. And that includes different classroom management strategies.
I hope this post finds you well and... honestly, surviving. We do this work because it is important. Know that your impact on kids is worth the tough days (or weeks, in my case). Be well!
sincerely, Cwik
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