Teacherscribe's Teaching Thought #9

Teaching Thought #9

Avoid dreams in your classroom.  

I’ve seen this dozens of times when we get back from some type of training, inservice, or professional development.  We are all fired up to try something new or even overhaul our entire curriculum.

This happened to me at MCTE last spring.  I attended a session taught by some English teachers from Annendale.  They shared how they revamped their entire curriculum to inject new life into their electives, which had a ripple effect throughout their entire department. One teacher crafted an elective called “Nonfiction in the Kitchen.”  Another crafted an elective called “Sick Lit,” which focused on mental health through literature.  A third created “Survival Lit.”

Even before the session was half way through, I was jotting down good points and ideas to try in the future.  They are just dreams though.

Unless . . . I set some goals (along with my English department colleagues) and craft a vision.  What steps do we need to take to make this happen?  How will the middle school teachers react?  How will this impact students more positively?  What will we do with the Collections curriculum we switched to five years ago?  Will the curriculum committee and the powers that be let us even do this?

If we don’t have a clear vision, it’s all just a dream.

I recall a colleague I used to work with.  We’d start the year and she would be all full of great ideas to inject into her classes.  Then school started and she got immersed in the daily grind of teaching.  I’d see her after a month of school and ask her about her great ideas that she was going to start and . . . guess what?  She’d grumble about not having time or them not working anyway.

She had no vision or goals.  She had dreams, which meant she had nothing.

Make your vision laser focused.