It’s okay to be an okay teacher in 2020

This year I feel like every time I turn around there is a new social media post or email from my favourite teaching organization or vendor, introducing or highlighting a new innovative or creative covid friendly teaching practice. It is great that so many people are reaching out and sharing ideas to help advance us all as a profession. 

In any other year, I have enjoyed scrolling through social media to see this sharing. I have utilized many good ideas and resources from those who share. I have always been thankful for those who take the time to share their ideas freely online, and sometimes I even try to contribute my own ideas. However,this year I am finding that seeing this sharing is more stressful than helpful. After some self-reflection I came to the conclusion that I only have the time, energy and mental capacity to be an okay teacher this year. I also decided that I’m okay with that. 

Let me clarify what I mean by being an okay teacher. Normally I have a desire to grow and improve my practice and try new things. This school year, I’m not taking on any new and creative learning opportunities, I’m leaning on my tried and true lessons, handouts and textbook work. Sure, I’m recording myself to create online lessons, but it's just that; me recording myself going through my traditional notes/activities/handouts. I am however, taking the time and energy to be present for my students. I’m also using more of my time and energy to check in with students and colleagues about mental health and wellness. 

Ultimately I had to remind myself that everyone has a different situation. To help you think about why someone else might have the time or energy to continue innovating in their teaching, I have developed a list of reasons to consider.   

1. Teaching Schedule; If you are teaching all the same course you might have that extra energy to still be creative in your lesson planning. Some of these teachers may only have a part-time teaching schedule due to the organization of their quadmester or octomester system this year.
2. Experience; Depending on their teaching schedule and discipline, some teachers have taught the same senior level science courses every semester for the last 10, 15 or 20 years. At that point simply going through the motions of the course does not require a significant amount of energy or time. Taking time to do something creative is not a stretch then.
3. Home Life; I am currently in the thick of having two young kids and my time at home is primarily dedicated to them. I know when I was first starting my career and had a quieter home life I had more time and energy to dedicate to creative lessons. Some people might enjoy, and have partners that enjoy, sitting on the couch talking about interesting lesson ideas on a Saturday night.
4. Paid Planning; Some teachers are given time out of the classroom to be a curriculum leader or instructional coach or they can be hired by companies to create those lessons that incorporate or promote their products. You can’t compete with paid time to plan. 
5. It’s 2020; We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. Some of us are coping with this better than others, and that’s okay. 
6. The Power of Online; The good and bad thing about social media and online information is that you are getting the polished, reviewed and edited version of everything. This takes time and energy and might make you feel bad when your attempt isn’t that pretty, but remember, learning is messy. Also, when you scroll through an email blast from your favourite teaching organization or search online, you are getting an aggregate of everyone on the internet (many many people) and you as one person cannot keep up with that. 
7. Burn Out; What you and I might (likely) not see is those same educators who are sharing these great lessons burn out shortly after. Most people who post on social media post their polished work and don’t always include the later burnout. I know this is happening to some teachers. We are no good to our family or students if we are burnt out. P.S. We are not even half-way yet!

For those of you who are posting these lessons, thank you. I know all of this sharing is done in good faith and with the intention to help those of us who might not have the time or energy to come up with these creative lessons. If you are one of those people I would like to urge you to acknowledge your own personal circumstances. This is not to allow others to judge you, but to allow us to recognize where you are coming from. It allows those of us struggling to keep up to be okay with being not as awesome as you. 

Next time you see a social media post or get an email with a new creative lesson idea think about what might have allowed that person to be able to create it. Also think about how that might be different from where you are and that it is okay to be an okay teacher in 2020. 

Personal disclaimer: This is my first year as the minor head of science. I’m teaching 4 different courses (between math and science) this year. I have 2 kids under the age of four. I do not get paid to write this, but I have a passion for helping fellow teachers, especially new teachers. I’m repeating one course this quadmester so I am fending off burnout so far. I’m forfeiting a few hours of sleep to write this at night and it took me two weeks!

 

When does Innovation Happen?

It's the end of June and I'm reflecting (well it's July by the time I posted this). It seems like this is a good time for reflection on the year, or maybe the only free time for reflection on the year. This last semester I think was the busiest in my now complete first four years of teaching. All three of my courses were new, I was in my second semester in a new school, new department, the list goes on.

About three-quarters of the way through this semester I met with my previous department head about some interesting innovations I had made to the grade 9 course and the new style of final assessment I piloted the semester before. It was a great conversation not only about the innovations but about the pedagogy in general. This left me energized and feeling good about some advances that I had made last semester. That feeling soon turned to guilt as I had done nothing but the status quo yet this semester.

I took me quite a bit of reflection and thinking to rid myself of the status quo guilt. I came to the realization that sometimes the status quo is actually new for you and that's okay. After teaching three brand new courses and two of them being senior physics, I decided to give myself a break. This is also a message that I am going to incorporate into my new teacher mentoring program. A new course can be your innovation this semester.

Looking forward, I have ideas for innovation for these courses for next year which I think is important. Innovation and adaptation of teaching needs to happen, but sometimes that has to happen the second time around.

Professional Learning During Social Time

During one of the initial meetings for our new mentor program one of the fellow mentees leaned over to me and said "we should do this over drinks". I think he had a great idea (not that I am promoting drinking). I have worked on teams where we were social together and teams where we weren't social. together. I know that having that more personal interaction helps with the everyday grind and maybe even introduces you to someone you didn't know very well, especially in the isolating career of teaching.

So as we are moving forward with the first semester of the new mentoring program I decided to incorporate two or three social outings. Last week was the first outing. When I organized it, I purposely didn't ask people to RSVP, I just told them where and when. As expected a couple of people stopped me in the hall or sent me an email with their regrets but I didn't hear many "I'm coming" so I wasn't sure how it would go. In the end there were over a dozen people who came and socialized after school (close to half the group). I think that's a win!

By my observations there seemed to be good conversation between many people, some social and some professional. I also heard many introductions around the table so I know some relationships were new. In the end as the crowd started to thin I was talking with a fellow mentee and he told me that he learned more than one thing that night. I also had a couple of good conversations and confirmed a couple of things about our upcoming interim reports. I think that's a double win!

Learning doesn't have always happen in the classroom or at a PD session and sometimes is better if it doesn't! Plus, it's also nice to know a bit about the person you pass in the hall everyday.

Teaching Scientific Literacy

Being relatively new to teaching science I am working on developing not only my delivery of the course content but this time around I am thinking about how increase my students' scientific literacy. I keep thinking about the ability for society (i.e. the students I am teaching today 10 years from now) to make decisions with scientific rigor. In order to develop this I am going to start to explore articles and topics each week and talk about the science behind them.

Yesterday over lunch I met with my mentor to discuss this and how to develop this skill with my students. In my grade 10 science class right after lunch we were discussing chemicals and how we are going to be looking at chemical reactions and equations next week. I had a student put up their hand and ask whether we could make water and then ask why we can't just make water to solve drought problems. We ended up talking about hydrogen cars (which none of them had heard of before) and we even made the chemical equation for the reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to create water (and a student saw the need for balancing the equation). WOW, one question that lead to a rich discussion about a chemical reactions, technology, current affairs (current drought in South Africa) and even started bridging the gap to the next part of our unit.

Although we didn't get all the answers and have enough time to finish that discussion, but I know that come Tuesday (it's a long weekend this weekend) we will be discussing more about water, chemical reactions and how science relates to current affairs. I think we are off to a good start!

Getting Organized for a New Semester

We are in the middle of first semester exams, so as a teacher I am doing double duty and not only marking exams but also looking ahead to get organized for second semester. Right now I am heading into a new semester where 2 out of 3 courses are going to be new for me, so I am gearing up for a busy semester and hoping to keep myself organized along the way. Over the last couple of years I have found a system that works pretty well but I'm also trying something new. Google Keep has done a great job at keeping my organized over the last couple of years and the new thing that I am trying this semester is simplifying my binder system.

Google Keep

My board is lucky enough to be a GAFE board so my Google Keep account is linked to my work email but if you don't have one of those you can use any GMail address to do this (I have a personal Google Keep account too). Google Keep is essentially digital sticky notes (they are a bit more complex than that but I don't get too complicated with my notes). I use it mostly as a to do list for me, but my organization of that to do list is what makes it work for me.

I have 4-5 main lists. I have one for each of the courses I'm teaching (3 in total), one that is labelled "Morning List", one for "Contact" and you could add one for each club/team/extracurricular you are involved in.

Morning List: My morning list is a very specific list of tasks that NEED to be completed today (I guess I should have called it a Today list). I use this to organize/prioritize my time. I am quite forgetful and sometimes forget in the morning what I need to do for the day so this gets me going right away. I also use this to force me to finish tasks by the end of the day. I share this list with my personal GMail account so that if I remember something as I am laying in bed I can add it for my morning task list. Here is a link which shows you how to share your Keep list.

Course Lists: These lists are not for immediate tasks but things that need to be done in the next week or ideas I have for a certain course. Most times tasks will shift from these lists to the immediate to do list when it becomes urgent, but the plan is to get things done before they are urgent! I also use this as a spot to record when I have talked to a student about something like "Jimmy is going to be away for Test 2", these are also conversations that I sometimes forget about!

Contact List: I started this list this semester and like it. I use this as a list of parents that I need to contact. I like it because I usually mark at night and when I finish marking I always look to see if there were any drastic changes in marks (which I should contact home about). This way I can make my list of names and make a note so that when I call home I have all the info I need. (I'm also trying a new system of recording my phone calls home in a Google Sheet, so maybe another post in the future).

Above you can see a snapshot of my lists (a bit in-flux right now since I am between semesters). Some other neat things that you can do is colour code the notes (I like my morning list to jump out at me). You can also "pin" a list to the top so it will always be displayed first. The only issue with this is that it separates that one from the rest and you have to scroll down to see the rest, more an annoyance that I like. You can also click and drag them around to reorganize them. There are many other tips and tricks if you search around.

Binders, Binders and More Binders

As a teacher I need to make sure that I keep attendance records, grade record sheets, Individual Education Plans and other important information with me all the time. Up until now I have been using one 1" binder for each course I teach. I liked this system for a while but now I have ran into a few issues. I have taken a binder home at night to record marks once I am done marking tests but I take the wrong class home. I also find myself leaving one in my office instead of my classroom, or the opposite, whenever I need it. To simplify this I am adopting a new system of ONE BINDER. I am going to cling to the binder with all my life!  I am also stopping to record my contact home on paper so I am going to reduce my needed paper, so I think that one 1" binder should be able to handle my attendance and grade recording sheets for all three classes. Here's hoping... or maybe this is going to be one of those things that I change again next year.

Every Class is Different ... Very Different

We are soon coming to an end in our semester and this week I have started the review process with my grade 11 university math classes. I have two sections this semester. The first day of the review I sent a few minutes discussing how I would manage my time if I were them and what I would recommend they do to prepare for a math exam. At this point in their educational career I give the students quite a bit of leeway in how they study. As such, after my few minute talk I set them loose to sort through their tests and start on the large set of review questions, in a very individualized manner. I sat back for a minute and watched my class get to work, and noticed something very interesting in the way my two classes approached this time. My morning class got right down to work, either by starting directly into some problems or by review tests and making a plan. The class was very quiet and looked like what you might think a productive classroom would look like. During my afternoon class about 75% of the class proceeded to take out a rats nest of a binder and start to clean and organize a mess of notes and homework sheets. I was overwhelmed by the number of grade 11 students who could not find their assessments from units past, or even the note on trigonometric identities from last week!

I am not sure if this is a case of my morning class not caring about organization or my afternoon class being way less organized... or some of both. This experience really showed me how different two classes can be, even when they have the same teacher and virtually same educational experience.

Secondarily it made me think that I need to talk to even my grade 11s about organizing their math binder... maybe on the agenda for the first week of second semester.

Why I am attempting to blog

I never thought I would be the blogging type. Since I have switched careers to teaching I have found myself able and willing to reflect on my professional practice and experience more often and more openly. There have really been two things that have driven me to blog, well maybe three!

Twitter
A couple of years ago I joined Twitter as a teacher (April 2015 to be exact), wow that was longer ago than I thought. Recently I have been using Twitter a lot more as a form of PD and learning in my "spare time". I have been overwhelmed and surprised at the number of people who share their life and teachings on Twitter (and the internet in general) so that others can learn from this. As such I am thinking that I need to give back to the world wide web. But who knows maybe no one will read this and it will become my personal journal or terribly embarrassing retirement party discovery!

Documenting things and helping others
In the last few years I have gone to the local Google Summit twice. I have found the conference very helpful in my practice. Last year I started to make videos about how to make a student behaviour/observation tracking system (which is a current focus in my board so a lot of teachers are looking for ideas). I shared these videos with some colleagues and my entire school recently. Since then I have found out that there are a number of people who have been using those videos and finding them useful. It is quite rewarding to see that more experienced colleagues are finding my videos helpful. This has made me think that maybe someone can learn something from my endeavours in blogging, I know I have learned from other bloggers.

Starting a mentoring program
The final reason for starting to blog is that I am spearheading a mentoring program at my school. I am hoping to use blogging as a documentation of this initiative and my experiences and lessons learned.

So here I go... my adventure into blogging begins! I hope you enjoy.