Almost eight years? Has it really been that long? I ponder this question daily. It seems like only yesterday I entered this field and sometimes wonder if I will ever be an expert at anything I do. I question on a daily basis whether or not I am cut out for this and I have to remind myself that the insanity that surrounds all of the red tape and the "business" and politics of education will be ever present and ever changing. The flavors of the month from the powers that be will remain and the absurdity of some of the mandates and mass amounts of paperwork, justifying what we teach, why we teach and how we teach looms in the background and sometimes clouds the true meaning of why we are all here. The children. They are why we are here. They are why we do what we do and jump through the hoops and wait to be told what the next standardized test will be, whether KCCRS will be put permanently in place, what new signage we must hang in our rooms, what specifics will be observed for the month and which best practices are the best at that moment. With that being said, I am grateful every single day for the role I play in helping guide young people to find hope for generations to come.
When I first began this journey of having to fight for my license in the state of Kansas, I almost gave up. I found great difficulty in balancing the college class load, teaching full time and remaining on all of the committees I had agreed to be a part of at my school. I knew I could learn a great deal by returning to school. However, what I did not anticipate was the amount of guilt I would feel surrounding the loss of time I had previously devoted to my children outside of the school day. This has weighed on my mind heavily this year. Not only does this weigh heavily, but so does the balance of personal sanity and family. In eight years, I have still been unable to find the balance between my personal and professional life. How do others balance this fine line? How do you not neglect your needs and the needs of your family?
The positive part of all of this is that I have had to reflect deeply upon how and what I have been doing in my classroom. It was refreshing to re-read Jackson's (2009) piece, Never Work Harder Than Your Students... and remind myself how far I have come and that I am, in fact, doing okay. I related to Rebekah when she waited for her students to find the answers and take responsibility for their own learning. She stated that, "We teachers talk too much. We don't give students time to think. I had to teach myself to shut up..." (177). I remember the days that I talked too much and still, some days, have to remind myself to shut up. Jackson (2009) states that learning is a messy process (177). It is messy, especially when we teachers continue to tweak ourselves throughout the process and continue to grow in our art form. And yes, it is an art form; a delicate, ever changing web.
For the past two years, I have been sent to numerous trainings with Randy Sprick http://safeandcivilschools.com/aboutus/trainer_bios/sprick.php and Anita Archer http://explicitinstruction.org/?page_id=19. Before this, most of my training was based in AVID strategies http://www.avid.org/ and AP curriculum http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/home. I never thought anything could come close to my love for AVID and AP. However, I have become very fond of Archer and Sprick and have woven all four of these takes on best practices and classroom management into a web of support. I do want to add that all of these (AVID, AP, Archer and Sprick) are nothing new. They are best practices which have been tweaked and re-spun around our students of today.
I am particularly fond of Archer's "I do. We do. You do," her vocabulary instruction, her choral response, and her reading strategies. Last year, I began to use many of her strategies in my classroom; even my honors. I have seen great results and more clarification in my students' eyes than in the past. These best practices, along with Sprick's classroom management and de-escalation skills, have helped my class to be more focused and controlled. This year, I have only had 2 PBR's and my CWC classes are taking more pride in their work and more focused during work time. Also, we sometimes forget that honors do not always know what is expected and Archer is a way to quickly teach basic skills and review. These skills, mixed with the rigor of AVID and AP, have allowed my students to find what works for them and gives me multiple ways in which to help them create their masterpieces.
I will leave you with this. The silk of a spider web is composed of protein. Constructing a web requires lots of energy because of the large amount of protein it takes during this process. At one point, the web looses its stickiness and requires the spider to have to re-spin its masterpiece. This masterpiece is created over and over and over, but with different results each time. Like our students, each web is unique; so is each teacher. We spin and we spin and we spin. Over and over and over. Each time, in our own way, resulting in a different, unique masterpiece.
- Virginia Quincy
Jackson, Robyn R. (2009). Never work harder than your students: other principles of great
teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
