“If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling back.” -Seth Waterson
Remember last year in your classroom? Remember all those things you did that worked well? And those things that didn’t?
Have you considered making any changes this year? I’m sure that if you’re reading a blog now, when you could just be watching Netflix or sitting on the beach, you’ve probably already got a list a mile long of things you want to change in your classroom this year. (Or if you’re somewhere metric, a list a kilometer long)
“Before you can move forward you have to decide that you’re not willing to stay where you’re at.” -Zig Ziglar
You’ve decided that you’re not willing to do the same things the same way anymore. Kids are changing. Culture is changing. Technology is changing. And it’s changing fast.
“If we fail to adapt, we fail to move forward.” -John Wooden
Our kids need us moving forward. They need new challenges, not just the projects we gave them in the past.
Did you have your kids build a diorama last year? This year, have them build one & use it to make a stop-motion video and use it on the green-screen while they read their report.
Did you have your kids engineer a marshmallow tower? This year, challenge them to use that tower as a prototype for their building in Minecraft or Tinkercad.
Did you have your kids do worksheets every day last year? This year, look at each worksheet & ask yourself these questions: a)What is the goal of this worksheet? b)Are the questions relevant? c)Could the same questions be asked using a Kahoot or other interactive quiz? d)Would you want to do this worksheet?
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” -Walt Disney
Our kids are curious. They want to know how the world works, how they can solve big problems, how they can make things better. They want more questions than answers.
If you haven’t asked kids what they want to learn about, what they’re passionate about, then you’re only teaching what you’re passionate about. Start this year by asking each kid what they’re interested in. And keep looking at that list all year long.
“Move forward with purpose.” -Sherilynn Kenyon
Remember, just moving forward with new technologies or new classes is not really moving forward. Yes, you can use that new classroom set of Chromebooks to get kids typing their reports. But we could take those kids, load them into a time machine, set it for your school in September 1979, and let them use some typewriters.
In the past few years I’ve spent a lot of time making changes in my already forward-leaning classroom. I don’t have room for a big “makerspace” but I do have room for a closet full of building supplies for my students to use for creating. I still use worksheets (I am a math teacher) but we spend way more time talking through how to approach tough questions than just checking our answers.
I’ve also noticed many kids just typing numbers into calculators hoping that they get the “right answer.” Or typing questions into Google. That’s not math. So I made the change to get kids holding the shapes and equations in their hands. It’s never anything complicated, and sometimes the “demo” works well, sometimes not as well. It usually starts by handing out some combination of paper, scissors, rulers, colored pencils, tape, and glue sticks to my students. What happens next is I try to help them “see” how formulas work. I try to help them “visualize” how a parabola is formed. And when the math is more than just numbers and letters on a worksheet, in a book, or on the board, math is suddenly something beautiful, creative, and worthy of exploration and discovery.
(and if you’re not a math teacher, guess what…if I can make math exciting, you should certainly be able to make your subject exciting too!)
