Skip to main content

What's Your Bench?

As my blended classroom continues to evolve and grow into a more effective classroom every week, I am quickly realizing how this venture is not as frustrating or frightening as I made it in my head at the beginning of the year. Each week, I learn from my mistakes and improve upon my practice; giving my students and myself a better blended classroom experience each day and each week.
In previous posts, I mentioned it's all about the learning, and that is true. No matter the device, it all has to come back to the learning for the students but also for the teacher. What I am learning is that as I incorporate the blended learning into my classroom, I still must incorporate my strengths as a 14 year teacher into as well. If I don't, then problems and frustrations quickly rise. For example, I have never been a teacher who can effectively manage log sheets of students work, so when I tried having students record their daily work at the independent learning station and turn their log sheets in at the end of the week, it quickly failed and led to frustration for the students and me. It ended up just being a waste of paper, which is comical since I am trying to cut down on paper. Another example is me having station outline sheets that describe what students are to be doing at every station every day. I found that this was helpful in the beginning, but that nice, yellow cardstalk, laminated sheets just ended up sitting there with the students never looking at them.

What I failed to do on both cases was identify and incorporate my strengths. Once I did realize them, then I started getting the quality of work that I wanted from my students. All I had to do was do what I was good at for the majority of my career, which was listing the objectives clearly and simply on the smartboard at the beginning of class when I had all of their attention. The bench press was never my strength, so I never should have been trying to bench heavy. Endurance exercises are my strengths, so I should have been focusing on endurance exercises. Either way is an effective workout, but you just have to know and trust your strengths to get the most effective workout for you.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Force Awakens

Just when I thought I had my blended learning classroom in a good place, everything changed. Half way through the school year, my district decided to pilot a new math series. This meant change. A change I was having trouble dealing with. For about two weeks I struggled and became quite frustrated trying to figure out how this new math series fit into the way I had been running my blended learning classroom. I kept trying to force the math series in but kept getting disastrous results. My struggles and frustration spilled over into my classes. I did not like what I was seeing from the math series, I did not like what I was seeing from my teaching, and I did not like the results I was seeing from my students. Every night I left school feeling disheartened, but determined to make things better the next day. The only problem was I kept trying to force the fix every new day, instead of sitting back, reflecting, and seeing what other solutions came about. I was suffering from a little ca...
Post a Comment
Read more

Did You Send Out the Invites

Do you send out invites to your parties, or do you just hope people hear about them through word of mouth and just show up? Unless you still live at a college frat house, chances are you send out invites. The invitations are an important part to any successful party. Without them, people don't know when, where, or even if there is a party. And it could be the best party ever, but no one would know without the invitations.  Earlier this year,  few of my colleagues and I went to a Breakout EDU workshop. It was something we all had a strong interest in, and something that we were excited to try when we got back to school. But then, something terrible happened. We all went back to work the next day, closed our doors, and started teaching in our own self-induced, solitary confinement classrooms. What we were so excited and energized about doing (and something that required communication and collaboration), faded away as quickly as the next day came. A few weeks went by, and I...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Great Wall

Having 13 devices in my room has been a dream come true. No longer can I complain about not having the tools to move my students' learning into the 21st century. No longer can I complain about not having time in the computer lab (an outdated use of a room anyway). No longer can I sit and wait until change happens. No longer can I make excuses. The responsibility is on me to use the tools, all the tools, in my classroom to make learning happen, meaningful, and wait for it, enjoyable. The 4C's (communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity), that are so widely talked about, are also my responsibility to incorporate into my classroom. What I am starting to realize more than ever, is that the devices I have are just additional tools in my classroom. They are not the be all end all. These tools definitely bring a lot more potential into the classroom, but it is still the pedagogical skills and relationships that are built that make a successful classroom. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more