​Overview: The class will begin with students interviewing their teacher and establishing classroom routine. The rest of the week is devoted to diagnostics and one-on-one "interviews" with students.

Click here for the full lesson plans.

I have been trained in AVID strategies, Project Based Learning, by the College Board, by NMSI, by Kevin Feldman. On 21st Century Learning, on the Four C’s, on MTSS.

Independently - this summer alone - I’ve read four professional books, viewed the #HiveSummit seminars, participated in multiple Twitter chats, and blogged about my own learning.

It might be time to sign up for PDA.
(No. Not the awkward kind we all try to ignore in the hallways.)
Rather, Professional Development Anonymous. You know, recovery meetings for those of us who dive a little too deep into the world of professional learning.

As a vice, it isn’t necessarily a bad one. I have loved (almost) every minute of my professional learning. The comedown of it, however, is starting to sully the high.

Let me paint a little picture of my summer professional reading binge...

June: After reading A Novel Approach by Kate Roberts, I decide to use her format of the full class novel, then book clubs, with awesome post-it annotation throughout! Yay!

July: After reading Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess, I decide that I need to make sure every single lesson is a winner - more action, more movement, more panache. Yay!

August: After reading Be REAL by Tara Martin, I decide that I need more time for one-on-one, or REAL Talk, with kids, so I find ways to put in more talk time. Yay!

Also August: I start reading 180 Days by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle, and I decide to implement daily writing on top of my daily reading. Yay!

Now: It’s less than two weeks out from Day 1, and as you might expect, my practice is being pulled in every which direction. I’m rewriting my lesson maps every day and frantically texting my AP Lang co-teacher to see if she’s on board to my radical changes. (Fortunately, she expects it from me….#teachersquad).

And the worst of it is that on top of all these great new “must trys,” I also have standards and PLC collaboration and building initiatives that need to fit in somewhere too.

It’s exhausting. And it burns teachers out.

However…

It doesn’t have to….. I hope. As I tend to do, I forgot my own advice:

Teaching has always been a juggling act, but when we really think about all the directions we get pulled in, nothing is more important than staying true to what you value as a teacher.

In other words, while I want to try every single idea I starred, underlined, or highlighted, I have to align every one of them to what I care about most - what I am most sincere about.

That’s what Teaching Sincerely means. A Sincere Teacher is always looking to learn and grow, but they are also flexible enough to adapt to obstacles and find the potential in the dissonance that educational discourse can create.

It's shamefully simple, really. A teacher just has to take time to reflect on what they are most passionate about, their “Why” as Tara Martin puts it in Be REAL. For me, it is teaching sincerely or authentically, so that I am always passionate about what is happening in my room and students are drawn in to that enthusiasm.

For me, that means…
...kids need to read and write to discover what they are passionate about and to learn that their individual voice brings something completely unique to this world.
...kids deserve authentic and meaningful educational experiences that prepare them for life in all its forms.
...I need to be able to take risks and adapt to my kids, even if it doesn’t fit the “Year at a Glance.”
...I need to be the best version of myself as a teacher. Every day.

These are all part of my Why. I will not sacrifice these things for any mandate or initiative. These are my BIG ROCKS. Once you know those priorities - or your own big rocks - all the new tricks, initiatives, and mandates can fill in like sand.

So while there will always be a steady stream of great ideas and new approaches and amazing insights, a teacher who knows their BIG ROCKS can fight off the burnout of PD overload and embrace what they Sincerely care about.

Consider:

Are you Teaching Sincerely? Do you know your BIG ROCKS? Comment below with what makes up your big rocks.

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In June, I excitedly announced to my #teachersquad that I had my first semester planned out, and that I loved every lesson in it!

They laughed. Not because I was geeking out about curriculum -- they’re used to that. No, they were laughing because they know me well enough to know that any master calendar is going to go through complete rewrites daily. And they were right. And it did.

The placement on a calendar has always been a challenge. I need to add a re-teaching lesson or plan for a sub or adapt for pep rallies and other interruptions and the calendar becomes a mess of copying and pasting.

As I was reading 180 Days by Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher this morning, I was rethinking how I could increase the diversity of the writing my kids do on a daily basis. After picking through the units I had designed, I came to a three part lesson design that I wanted to replicate throughout the year. This, then, grew into my new lesson planning tool: A Lesson Map.

This lesson map is an extension of the concept map I posted about recently, with content broken into units. The solution here lies in the format. Using this model, I can easily add lesson or entire units wherever needed. At the same time, I can still simply copy and paste them into my weekly lesson plans.

So, today, I just want to share it. Here is an excerpt from my own lesson map, and here is a link to the free resource! Hope it helps!​

One of the reasons I started blogging was because I sincerely love helping other teachers. If I could spend my days talking through curriculum and bouncing ideas off of other teachers, I would be in heaven. Really.
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That’s why I love days like today. My alma mater contacted me about being a mentor at their New Teacher Academy, and I jumped at it. I honestly love most professional development, but being able to be around new teachers is exciting. They’re so passionate and fired up that it is contagious.
Talking through their classroom management plans and first day lessons, I kept spinning through all the missteps of my first year. I fell into the classic “coulda-woulda-shoulda” situation. So here’s the “shoulda.”
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• Transitions: Something that I astronomically overlooked as a young teacher was transitions. The time lost in those moments between activities must have accumulated to hours of potential time and positively destroyed any sense of pacing there might have been in those patchwork lessons.
  • “Veteran” Tip: When working through lesson planning, think about the logistics. What can they do while a computer is turning on or logging in? How can I group them quickly and effectively? What supplies do I need and how can I distribute them without causing chaos? The pragmatic part of lesson planning was too easy to overlook. Be intentional.
• Relationships: I am wrestling this one out still. By the end of the year, I feel confident in the bonds I have made with kids, but it’s always a slow build. Each fall, I tell myself that this needs to be better, but it wasn’t even on my radar as a young teacher.  I was so buried in content and planning that the value of investing in relationships eluded me, and I regret some of those missed connections.
  • “Veteran” Tip: There are so many strategies to be intentional about building relationships. Today, I shared the 2 X 10 strategy – which is a well-structured method of making those deep connections with students. Spend two minutes talking to a student for 10 consecutive days (during work time, at the end of class, before the bell). This is obviously not practical for all students, but it works wonders on those students you identify as challenging. A more practical tool is the attendance question. Pick out a general question that everyone can answer, and when you call their name for attendance, they answer. You can follow up for more detail, ideally switching kids each day. You can very quickly learn a lot about the kids in your care.
• Priorities: Time is a precious commodity, especially for teachers. As a new teacher, I misplaced these priorities. Prime example: independent reading. My school is structured in 50 minute periods, so an investment of 10 minutes a day seemed completely unreasonable. Experience taught me that your priorities have to drive how that time is spent. I want my kids to be strong readers and writers, so 10 minutes of reading practice is never wasted time.
  • “Veteran” Tip: Any new teacher will quickly learn how easy it is to be overwhelmed by all the different directions we get pulled in. One corner is shouting for more leadership instruction, another screams for collaborative problem solving, and about a 100 more stand on their own soapboxes speaking their own truth. Every one is valid, but everyone has to build their own soapbox. My suggestion is to be intentional about choosing how to invest time. Sit down, write a SHORT list and plan accordingly. Choose your own teaching destiny based on their list.
• Ask for Help: One embarrassing recollection I have from my first year is how I interacted with veteran teachers. I came in guns blazing, wrecking ball-esque, and convinced I had all the ideas to fix the world of education. As a veteran teacher, I recognize how off putting this must have been and hold it responsible for some of the tension I faced that year. I was saved by a receptive collaborative team, but I would never suggest this approach to a new teacher. Veteran teachers NEED to hear new ideas (said the most rigid veteran teacher I know), but I should have respected my position more.
  • “Veteran” Tip: Observe the relationships of those you’ll work with. Take the time to feel out the personalities and the rough edges. In other words, know your audience. Make it easy on yourself and embrace what they offer, but hold true to those priorities. When you have something you love, share it nonchalantly. Send an email with a “take it or leave it” tagline. Trust me. Sometimes what you have is exactly what they’re looking for. (Even if they’re difficult curmudgeons like me.)

 
And that’s the highlights. The list could be endless if I were to dig into the many mistakes of my first year, but after spending the day with new teachers, these are the ones resonating. These are the ones I want to scream from my own soapbox.

​And here I am. 

If you are anything like me, you AGONIZE over the first days of school. I scroll through Pinterest, evaluate my own past lessons, ask my colleagues, and creep on Twitter just to find something that checks all my boxes.

This year, however, I think I have a plan!

While in Texas for more training, my BTFF (Best Teacher Friend Forever) and I were pouring over what we wanted the first week to look like. We have a shared goal this year of focusing on meaningful relationships upfrontn the past, we have built trust and respect with our kids, but it has been a long (difficult, at times) process with such a challenging class. This year, we want to start earning that trust Day 1. 

Usually, that trust has come via a lot of transparency: modeling activities which force us to vulnerably demonstrate making mistakes, connecting everything to real life work or college, and general dorkiness throughout the year. This year, we came to a revelation about placing that transparency at the beginning of the year. What is more transparent than allowing the kids to interview us?

So on the first day of school, the kids will be given my resume, this cover letter, and our district's banks of general interview questions. From that, they will have 10 minutes to revise or replace those questions with their own. [Note: Our instructional coach is going to step in to cover for us here or we plan to swap rooms. This keeps the questions authentic and spontaneous.]

Then, the scary part. The kids get to ask their questions, and we're going to answer them honestly. I am so anxious about the whole thing that I have been practicing my responses to hypothetical questions in the car or shower. 

After, we are going to ask students to come up with their own "academic resumes." Instead of jobs, they will list the grades they have completed with skills learned in each. The rest of the week, then, we will interview them individually while students complete their diagnostic assessment. 


And that's the plan! It is scary and awesome and focused. It is also very REAL (something I am reading about in Tara Martin's Be Real: Educate from the Heart). I know I am nervous about the interview portion, but those nerves tell me I'm moving in the right direction. It is easy to throw a diagnostic at them on day one or play some ice breaker games. True vulnerability (and therefore, taking risks) should make you nervous. Passionate teaching requires a whole lot of healthy anxiety.

Contact me for the academic resume template or the student interview questions! Or if you just wanna hear how it goes, check my Twitter on Aug. 28. (Maybe the 29th. First Day Cwik usually falls asleep the second she gets home).