***That’s the trouble with me and cool teaching stuff…I want to take it all back to my students and share it with them. The trouble has been that there has been more cool stuff and the same (and in some cases…dwindling) amounts of time in my daily schedule.
***Let’s take this past school year, for example. A typical day starts unofficially at 7:30am where the children MAY come into the classroom to unpack their backpacks, trade library books, etc. The day officially starts at 8:00am with our school-wide television/news called “PNN: Panther News Network” and our librarian reading aloud a story. That can take us until 8:15am on good days or closer to 8:25am on those days when the story runs longer or there is more school news to pass on. No problem. I can get going on my day…until 9:00am when I must stop to take the children to Specials (PE…Art…Computer Lab) where 45 minutes later (55 when you include a bathroom and drink break)…so we might as well say that the kids are back with me at 10am. Great! Back to learning…until I have to stop at 11:30am to get ready for lunch and recess. After all that, (with another bathroom break), I am back with my students at about 12:30pm. Super! I have the afternoon for some great learning…until I have to stop all direct instruction for “remediation” at 1:00 and in the spring when EOGs get closer…at 1:30, too. Mind you, I have to stop at about 2:00pm to get the children packed up and out the classroom door for the buses by 2:20pm because the buses pull out promptly at 2:30. I haven’t even included the various emergency drills, the assemblies, the observations, the birthday cupcakes, the sick children, the bathroom emergencies and the myriad of other unexpected events that occur in the daily life of an elementary classroom teacher. Then the day is over and I prepare for the next day…. How…you may ask…do I get anything done???? Of course, you know the answer to that, all you great teachers out there. I multi-task like crazy. You have heard of tiered learning, well I firmly believe that there is tiered scheduling, too. Extra bathroom breaks are squeezed in along with taking lunch count and attendance. While kids are out at remediation, the other children and I are working in small groups on tasks that are specialized for them, too. Walks to and from places like PE and the playground are perfect for short nature/Science connections or practicing using the Wondrous Words we are discovering in our Reading and Writing. All good teachers do things like that…because that is the only way to fit things in and still make learning relevant and developmentally appropriate. That in 412+ words (according to my word counter) is a typical day of an elementary school teacher.
***NOW…throw in…wait for it….ASSESSMENTS. That really can throw the schedule out of whack. We teachers have been told, though, that we should provide for testing situations and a classroom atmosphere that smoothly integrates testing into our schedules. Easier said than done with elementary children who require that a huge portion of the testing must be given individually. And usually those same reading assessments must be done multiple times with my students to determine the perfect reading level for them. Granted, all grade levels have assessments and the stress they ensue from stringent standards, protocols, multi-page booklets, e-assessments, etc. I get that, and I have done that in the various grade levels I have taught. I take none of the work and challenges away from any teacher. My point is: when is it too much? When does the pendulum swing too far to one side? I see the need for assessments for all the right reasons, but when it takes away from valuable teaching time??? No. That is not right. One teacher in my school added up all the time it took to assess our children for the year and it came roughly up to about 1/4 of the school year! Oh what I could have done for my students…and oh what my students could have done with that extra time. (This is when I heave a huge sigh…)
Soooo, what is the answer to this huge problem? The testing isn’t going away. If anything, there is more of it. The answer might have come from what I am learning as a Kenan Fellow: be smarter about it and expand the possibilities for other venues to help me teach smarter and more efficiently so that my students learn deeper, apply their learning with me and see how technology can be a great tool to make that learning happen.
***What I want to take from my Kenan externship and connect it back to my classroom is the sense that I CAN win this battle of time…that I CAN make my restricted time schedule work…that I WON’T let the assessments get the best of me and my psyche. There are better methods and modes “out there”, and what I am learning this summer has the potential for tremendous impact. My initial step will be to learn more about classroom flipping and videotaping sample lessons that are developmentally appropriate for young children. Is this going to turn into my (new ?) Kenan project?
***Right now, I am thinking of the potential for flipped classroom learning. It is a “no brainer” to think that it can work at the middle and high school levels, but elementary is a little “stickier”. “Why not try? What could I flip?” I ask myself. Math is the most obvious choice as the objectives are pretty straightforward and organized. But I see potential for Language Arts to be flipped, too. So much of what is taught at K-2 is foundational that it has the potential to lend itself to be somewhat task specific at the initial stages.
***I would love to hear what others think about classroom flipping. How are you using it? How are you going to use it? How long for the videos? Accessibility? Online links? What are the dangers? What have been the benefits?