Skip to main content

Thank You for 20 "Mo" Years.

By Anonymous
After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content.  The point of this post is to take a step back, reflect, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School, as expressed through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them.  I don't take many "yay me" moments. But after 20 years, I'll soak this one in.
Post a Comment

Navigating the AP Crush

By Anonymous



We are a few days away from spring break.  When we come back from break, I will have 4 weeks with my AP Physics students before they take AP Exams in Physics 1 and 2.  After the exam, we will have roughly 5 weeks together before the end of the school year.  Now, I will have no problems covering the content before the AP Exam in either class.  I will definitely be able to teach them all the content.  The issue I have is that there will not be enough time for them to actively learn the content before the exam date.

If all of my students were taking the AP Exam, it would be easier to focus the students on a common goal of this exam.  But, only about 50% of my students are taking the exam.  It would be my dream to be able to create multiple paths in the AP classroom, but I’m not there yet.

So really the frustration is coming down to two areas.  The first is the amount of content students need to master in a short amount of time to be ready for the AP Exam.  The second is the fact that all of my students are not trying to reach the same goal.  Half of the students don’t need to master this content before the AP exam since they are not taking it.  So while some students have 18 weeks to master the AP content, others have 13.  This timeline is not dictated by their ability level, challenges, or strengths.  This timeline is dictated by the fact that they did or did not sign up to take the AP exam.

Again, I will have no problem presenting the content to the students in 13 weeks.  But the process of rich, individualized formative process is left behind.

What’s the solution?  I’m really not sure.  But, I know I need to design a better model.  I don’t want to create a track where some students do deep explorations because they have the time while others focus on pacing themselves to cover all the content.

The great activity I did with Kate and Angela this year was due to the fact that I was willing to take 3 days out of the AP Physics 1 schedule to let them share physics with 4th graders.  They were not communicating physics at an AP level to 4th graders.  But everyone involved agreed that it was a wonderful transformative learning experience.

So what’s my plan for this year?  I’m going to put forward a few ideas to my students after break and see how they feel about it.  We will be sure to cover all the content before the AP test and all students will be held accountable for learning this content.  There will be summative assessments in the form of traditional tests.  We will not spend time in class reviewing for them because I’ll consider them in-progress grades and hold them in check.  Once AP exams are finished, we will revisit these objectives more in depth and make the connections we didn’t before.  Students will have the opportunity to demonstrate mastery in ways that they were not able to do on the unit tests from before.

So while the first time around in the sound unit, I will be delivering the content via large group instruction and demonstration.  The second time around, we’ll be able to have students design sound stations for our visit to Brookfield Elementary School.  Our first time around covering optics, we will do some cookbook labs with little inquiry.  The second go around, I hope to have students do some more personal investigation of tools that use lenses or the science behind specific optical phenomenon.

So while the first time they learn it may be for AP, the second go around will be with a personal bent.
Here’s to failing forward.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twitter Cards for Blogger

By Anonymous
So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot ...
13 comments
Read more

Personalized Learning Tasks and Roles

By Anonymous
Yesterday, I read a great post by Jim Rickabaugh dealing with the roles of learner and teacher in a personalized learning environment by looking at tasks . The roles were set up on a continuum. This article timed perfectly with a reflection on part of Students at the Center by Allison Zmuda and Bena Kallick on idea generation and task development I had in mind. These two works are the focus of my reflection here. I think a key misunderstand teachers have when it comes to digging into personalizing learning is that for planning purposes, we no longer begin with standards but with student desires.  I believe like all good instruction, we need to start with the standards.  Think about it, standards are what we want all learners to know and be able to do as a result of passing through our educational system. That is why it is essential that we make sure that standards are representative of what we believe is important for learners to be informed and productive in th...
1 comment
Read more

Pear Deck 101 + Q&A

By Anonymous
  Last week, I presented as a part of Pear Deck’s Pear Fair 2020. My presentation was Pear Deck 101 for Google Slides. During the presentation, there was a live chat. Many people said it went too fast for a 101 Session. Luckily, it was recorded so it can be rewatched.  Also, many said that they wanted to know how to build a Pear Deck first. I structured the presentation to show what Pear Deck was before showing how to make one. Perhaps that wasn’t the best structure. But, I’m going to stick with my philosophy of showing what something is before showing how to make it. The presentation, which can be watched below, was structured in several different sections What is Pear Deck? Providing an overview of the experience from the Teacher and Student perspectives. How do you build a Pear Deck in Google Slides? How do you start a Pear Deck presentation? How do you end a Pear Deck presentation? Here is the Slideshow I shared during the session bit.ly/pearfair101 Time really flew in...
2 comments
Read more