It’s August 21st, which means that there are only 12 days until the big day where everything starts all over. \u00a0That’s right, it’s my Birthday! \u00a0But one day after turning 33, I\u00a0report to school for the 2014-2015 school year. \u00a0As the day\u00a0quickly approaches, I am starting to think through what my\u00a0big goals\u00a0will be for the school year. \u00a0Most years I have one or two big projects outside of the classroom, such as basketball coaching, or developing new curriculum, and this year will be certainly no exception. \u00a0But inside the classroom, one of my big projects will be becoming a totally different teacher (every 2 weeks or so).<\/p>\n
For the first 9 years of my teaching career I was pretty much focused on getting students through the material in as reflective of a way I could. \u00a0When I found something that worked, I stuck with it. \u00a0Now I have a series of worksheets, chained together into units that reflect not only what content I’ve taught, but who I am as a teacher. \u00a0As I approach another year teaching the same material I kind of want to turn my back on my old standards and start something new.<\/p>\n
There are so many great resources and lessons on the internet, I want to try actually using those in my classroom. \u00a0This of course means eschewing the parts of me that live inside of the lessons I created years ago, and trying to crawl inside the minds of\u00a0Dan Meyer, Andrew Stadel, Robert Kaplinsky, Mathalicious, Illustrative Mathematics, (am I missing anyone? add it in the comments) and the other educators\u00a0whose lessons I could\u00a0use. \u00a0I think it will force me to try new ways and approaches to teaching, and ultimately make me a different,\u00a0and better, teacher.<\/p>\n
Using outside lessons could quickly provide little to no benefit. \u00a0I could easily take a lesson, re-type into my regular microsoft word format, and implement it in the way I implement my\u00a0boilerplate\u00a0stuff. \u00a0I’m wondering if I miss out on the potential gains I might see if I try to teach each of these as true the materials’ style, and as differently from my own. \u00a0I really like modifying textbook and other tasks, but I think sticking to the plan will actually be a new and interesting challenge. \u00a0Doing\u00a0this 4 times each quarter, or roughly every 2 weeks, will provide enough to selectively choose and reflect on each item.<\/p>\n
For this year, in each of my classes\u00a0I plan to substitute my regular curriculum with quality tasks from the web or otherwise.. \u00a0When doing this I’m going to try to do it as faithfully to the lesson plan as possible, and only try to modify it when there is clear evidence that it needs modification. \u00a0Each Quarter I plan to incorporate an outside task with my students at least 4 days (two-day lessons count as one task), and keep track of it here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s August 21st, which means that there are only 12 days until the big day where everything starts all over. \u00a0That’s right, it’s my Birthday! \u00a0But one day after turning 33, I\u00a0report to school for the 2014-2015 school year. \u00a0As the day\u00a0quickly approaches, I am starting to think through what my\u00a0big goals\u00a0will be for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Goal for 2014: Being A Totally Different Teacher http:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-4s","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-4s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}