Changing on the Fly

When I submitted my portfolio for my National Boards renewal this past spring, one of the things I stressed was how my advanced degrees benefited my students was my flexibility. My advanced knowledge of my content and pedagogy meant that if a student was not getting something in class, I was able to instantly pivot and explain in a different way, offer a different example, change things.

I think that the benefit of having an expert or master teacher is too often overlooked, or dismissed.

I circled back around to this idea this week.

It is the time in the semester where teachers are tired. While I have issues with public schools celebrating Thanksgiving (and other holidays, I'm working on a calendar post) I have to admit, it's a well timed break. By this point, we're tired. Our students are tired AND tired of us. The culmination of 13 weeks of work, and practices, and homework, is wearing on them. Students who are drowning and behind don't see a way out, a way through. And it's dark early.

I have found myself especially feeling worn out and exhausted. At first I thought it was the election, and I'm sure some was, but those ended, and last week I could barely find any energy to do anything.

So I started to try and think. I think I got it.

I'm doing pretty much everything new this year.

• My students and I start every class reading in our independent reading books for 25 minutes. No reading logs. No accountability. No prompts. Not assigned. Reading for the sheet joy of reading.
• I 100% committed to station rotations this year. 
• I decided to do the work with my students, provide models, and use the station rotation time for feedback, discussions, and less "work" or at least less graded work

This has been, by far, by every possible metric, my best year of teaching in 18 years. The kids love the representative books I bought for them. They cuddle with the reading woobies I bought. They are on task, reading, learning, being heard.
So I am estactic.

But I also get now why I'm tired. Because this is hard work. And a lot more of it, and nothing got taken off my plate, despite me backing out of a lot of things.

Doing the work with the students means doing every assignment. I've always kept a notebook (interactive notebook/daybook/writer's notebook) to serve as a model for students, but I've rarely if ever modeled the assignments. I put my notes and organizers in there for reference, but annotating all the texts, doing the work, nope.
Now I do them, with them. On Mondays we see all classes for 50 minutes. On Tuesday/Thursday I see 2nd and 6th period, on Wednesday/Fridays I see 5th period for 110 minutes, and these are the days we do station rotations. Which means on most of these days I do the assignments with each class.
Some days, I organize the station rotations so I do not work with a specific station but instead walk around monitoring, guiding, getting them started, asking questions.
I like both types of days.
But these days are harder, and require more energy that my classes used to.

I was never a give instructions, sit at my desk teacher. We did workshops, and readings, and projects, and crafts. It was very student centered. But what I'm learning this year is that student centered is not always personalized, and the second requires a lot more work.

I always rough out my calendar for the next year before I leave in May. Then over the summer, as I see resources, ideas, web links, I add them.
This year, my rough plan for the freshmen was to spend the first marking period focused on them, their voices and choices, using youth culture as a focus. Then spend one marking period on each genre: non-fiction, short stories, novel, drama, epic/poetry.

We're supposed to teach Romeo and Juliet but I'm going to teach it through film analysis AND by centering the historical context on what New Mexico was like in the early modern period, a trick I stole from my friend Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.

Most 9th  grade teachers teach The Odyssey. And I have Circe and Emily Wilson's new translation to show them, and we'll talk about how perspective changes content. But we're also going to read Rick Riordan Presents series, myths and stories from non-white voices.

But what I've noticed with these first few units is that as I get to know my kids, I know what they like, don't, need help with, struggle deeply with. So that day I rewrite a station rotation for that class, or the next. I throw out that week's work to go back, rewind, revisit. I throw out an entire marking period on novels because I realize my kids can use their independent reading books as novels and we don't need to read a class novel.

I am proud of this work. It is serving my kids better than ever before.
But it is a lot.
Finding time, taking time, reflecting, stepping back, taking blame.

And this is in addition to my role in our freshman academy, job mentor program, Saturday school, department work.

So, I guess I just want to share that it's okay to be exhausted. It's okay to just focus on small moves. It's okay to fail, have lessons go off the rails, blow up.
Just keep going, keep learning, keep listening.