October is the month where teaching starts to get real.\u00a0 By now the school has sorted through all of the beginning of the year hiccups, and your kids have all gotten comfortable in the room.\u00a0 This time of year, October, is where it starts to become about you. Right now if it might feel like you are having problems or your plans from the summer are falling apart, and it’s easy to get frustrated with yourself.\u00a0 Don’t get too down on yourself at this point of the year.\u00a0 Now is the time to take a positive look at yourself to remind yourself how silly it is to get down on yourself so early in the year.<\/p>\n
First thing you should do is look at all things that are ‘hot’.\u00a0 On a sheet of paper, or in your evernote, or even on your blog list out all of the things going well.\u00a0 Here are some prompts to think about:<\/p>\n
Looking at the goings on around your classroom, what things are working so well that you take them for granted.\u00a0 Some days I think back to the first October of my teaching and I had to change my entire system for pretty much everything (how they entered the class, how they took notes, what should happen when they throw broken crayons across the room, etc.).\u00a0 I persisted through the world falling apart around me only 10 years ago, yet now I act as though it’s bedlam when it takes more than a minute to transition to group work.\u00a0 Give yourself some credit, and think through all of the things that are going well.\u00a0 If you can’t think of anything, ask a colleague to come in and write down what they notice.<\/p>\n
In your room there might be 1 or 2, kids who are not getting it, and seeing them struggle can’t help but get to you.\u00a0 You’ve pulled them aside, rearranged the seats, and even worked their names into a worksheet but you still can’t make any progress with them.\u00a0 Well what about the kids who are responding?\u00a0 What is working for them?\u00a0 If you don’t have any idea what will work, maybe gather some information with exit tickets.\u00a0 You’re better off improving the overall experience for all your students than targeting just the one or two trouble spots.\u00a0 That’s like the guy who wants to cut down his gut, but instead of getting a better diet, doing all around cardio, and purusing a more active lifestyle, they strap on a slendertone ab flexing belt <\/a>and curls up on the couch with a pillow and a pint of ice cream.<\/p>\n Teaching is a constant dance between extremes.\u00a0 First you want a loud, energetic discussion, then you want a quiet, focused independent work time.\u00a0 Maybe your students will be thinking through all the ways to challenge an idea, and next they’ll want to think of all the ways to support some other idea.\u00a0 You probably begin most lessons wanting students to be in their comfort zone, only by the end of it, have them grappling with something completely new.\u00a0 Swinging from one extreme to other, whether it be in content, or classroom layout, or interaction style, is a difficult and important task.\u00a0 Before you worry about how far forward you wanted them to go, give yourself credit about how much lateral progress you were able to make along the way.<\/p>\n There are lots of things you have to write down.\u00a0 You just aren’t doing it because you’re modest.\u00a0 Come on, if you’re going to get down on yourself, you owe it to yourself to brag a little bit first.\u00a0 Write down all the reasons you’re awesome and some of the positive things going on in your class.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Next, after you’re done with the positive list, and hopefully shifted your perspective, list out all the things aren’t working well. As you write, you need to think about the next steps.\u00a0 Don’t think that once your list of things are finished you can just curl up on the coach with the Triple-P (Pillow, Pajamas, Pint of Ben & Jerry’s) and feel sorry for your self.\u00a0 You’ll have to get your growth mindset in gear, and make plans to have growth in those areas that aren’t working.\u00a0 Make plans to address them so next time you can say: “Well this isn’t working, but I am on the way to fixing it.\u00a0 Some general plans to getting things fixed could include:<\/p>\n Hopefully this helps out, I’m only a little ways into teaching, but I’m going to explain why I’m hot, and why I’m not in a few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" October is the month where teaching starts to get real.\u00a0 By now the school has sorted through all of the beginning of the year hiccups, and your kids have all gotten comfortable in the room.\u00a0 This time of year, October, is where it starts to become about you. Right now if it might feel like […]<\/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":"This is why I'm hot, and this is why I'm not. Two approaches to deal with October http:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-57","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-57","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317"}],"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=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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This why I’m not<\/h4>\n
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