I think this blog entry may be a rant….
Well, the lessons have been taught and I worked to provide the best opportunities and resources possible for the staff at my school. It is a bittersweet feeling I have right now because I went into this endeavor filled with high hopes that what I provided would be oh so helpful to oh so many teachers. I also envisioned the idea that I would be able to go to other schools in my district and provide assistance to their staff members, as well. Let’s do a count on one finger as to how many schools I went to and shared about my project….uh, that would be one. Talk was out there for me to help and there were lots of unanswered or unresponded phone calls and emails from administration. The most frustrating of those were the ones where they contacted me to set up sessions and then my efforts to make that happen were left…well, I don’t know where they were left….but they were left. It got to the point where I told my principal that evidently what I have to offer isn’t needed right now; with her responses always being to the opposite and lots of “oh no! I think what you have to offer IS important and I DO want you to come”…hmmm. The actions of the non-attending staff members spoke a different tale and the inaction by other administrators told a different tale, too.
BUT…I was not deterred in my fight to get the word about Home Base out there through my Kenan project lesson plans. I did teach three sessions and shared a fourth one at a state conference. I guess I need to be happy for that and maybe my planted seeds of lessons will slowly grow some sprouts of interest.
It is always good to test out what one thinks and plans to see how it turns out in reality, so I am glad to have that opportunity. What did I discover? The main focus and flow of my lessons are workable and the technology I integrated worked with them, too. My lessons will take longer than I originally wrote, but I kind of already knew that when I typed in the numbers. To provide an opportunity to teachers as I planned and one that would be most beneficial for them, I knew that the time would almost be doubled. The problem is that teachers don’t want to sit and work for 90 minutes after teaching all day in the classroom. I might keep their attention for an hour, but not longer. So, my dilemma was to either cut out parts of the lesson or divide it into more sessions. The latter is what I wanted to do, but I could quickly see the writing on the wall with the low level of interest and effort early on with what I had to offer. Sooo, I crammed as much as I could into the time and days that I had. I knew that I couldn’t force them to do anything. I guess that is one of the biggest lessons I learned from this experience of teaching staff development lessons to teachers rather than instructional lessons to students. Wow! What a different mind set!
Of course, my first reaction is to tell myself that something I did or didn’t do was what was wrong. I missed something. I let folks down. They don’t need me. Whine…whine…nanny boo hoo! So then, I reviewed…I revamped…I added information….I supplemented…I differentiated. I had vowed that I would never forget about what it is like for classroom teachers right now. So, I again looked back and put myself back in the classroom (being newly retired in September 2013…) and really examined what I would be thinking about all of this new “stuff”. I remembered how busy I was with my personal teaching standards and the imposed standards from administration and how my time was not really mine…unless I worked weekends and late nights… I knew I was asking alot from teachers who already do so much and are pushed to the breaking point with testing, paperwork, accountability, “Big Brother”, PBIS, 3D Reading, EOG, Read To Achieve….and the list goes on and on. That helped me not take things quite so personally.
I also learned that teaching this kind of staff development topic to teachers required way more supplemental resources to be created than I originally thought; especially, when I looked at the Kenan lesson suggestions and requirements. I told friends that I felt like this project was growing extra arms and legs every time I worked on a lesson. That “aha moment” led me to rethink the complete organization of the unit and also led me to including it in a Livebinder rather than just files in a Dropbox. It seems I wasn’t the only one being taught new technologies…I also had to use and learn about a new technology to supply what I thought my unit needed. So, do I think my lessons are good? Yes. Do they need revisions? Yes. Isn’t that the case in all teaching, though? No one lesson plan is ever the best one…it is the best one for that year…for those students…for that time. Next year? It will have to be revised for a whole new group of students. (BTW that is what I never understood about teachers who save their old lesson planners to use for the next school year. How do they DO that when the kids are so different? But THAT topic is for a different rant…)
I made myself do what I always pushed my student teachers to consider: where does this drive my future instruction? What are my next steps? What did I learn from teaching this and what should I try to do next? I am crazy for saying it, but I have one more time offered my services for the next school year (possibly during the summer workdays) to teach these lessons or at least share the elements of my project to teachers in the hope that they may find it as useful as I think it is… Will I be playing phone tag with administrators? Yup. Will I be pushing folks to come to these sessions…for their own good? Yup. Will I do more than what is required of me? Yup.
Was this blog entry a rant? Yup.