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.
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 read...