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.
Learners in my classroom are very comfortable doing what they are assigned to do. They aim to complete the task at hand as defined by me. Many do not question the why of the learning because of an understanding that this is what it means to “do school”. When given an assignment, it is a task to completed. The learners in my classes are very compliant in that way. When given hands-on tasks that ask them to create a product, they are highly engaged. Some take the opportunity to unleash their creativity and go beyond the norm to own the process while the majority create within safer prescribed paths. I want to provide more opportunities for students to own their choices on a daily basis in our classroom. For a few years now, I have been working with freedom of choice in forms of summative assessments in my classroom. But, the day to day practice work in my class has really fallen into the compliant practice question mode. The practice work my students do has several...