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, take in, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School 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 think I'll soak this one in.
In 2019, I had big plans of working on my National Boards. I began researching and determining exactly what the process entailed. I put together documentation of what goes in each part of the portfolio. I mapped out important deadlines. But then, 2020 happened and everything got put on hold. About a month ago as summer was approaching, I decided that the timing would be right to start again pick up where I left off, which was at the beginning. So, this is the one professional related task I will be working on over the summer. As I go through the process, I hope to use this blog as a place to reflect and share my progress in the process. So this is not so much of a blog post as it is a way to hold myself accountable to truly start the process and post updates to the blog. So, here we go...