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

Flipping Out for Faculty Meetings

This year my classroom grew from about 25 students to about 665 students, as I made the transition from sixth grade teacher to elementary principal. It has been an exciting and enjoyable transition. It has also been interesting being on the other side of things. For example, being on the other side of faculty meetings. September's faculty meeting I did the traditional approach. Scheduled it. Sent out an email reminder. Met with the faculty and started going over what I needed to say, offering very little time for discussion. But then I did change things up about half way through. I introduced our district's Google Expedition VR kits. I took them on a few virtual reality field trips and showed them how they could be used with any subject. Then before I knew it, it was time for the students to arrive. As I prepared for my October faculty meeting, I thought about how I introduced the teachers to the Google Expeditions VR kits and how teachers in grades 3, 5, and 6 used tho
Post a Comment
Read more

Instant Pot, Instant Failure

The Instant Pot I received for Christmas this past year sat for a few months before I even thought about using it. My wife would remind me frequently we had it and that I should try it (I do all the cooking in the house. She does all the laundry. Fair trade-off). When she would encourage me to use our new cooking gadget, I looked at her and our Instant Pot with a little disdain. I felt my cooking was pretty good, and besides I already had my go to Pioneer Woman dinners that couldn't be beat. So I was always a bit insulted when the Instant Pot was referenced in my house, as I felt not only was my cooking being insulted but so was the Pioneer Woman herself, Ree Drummond. Then one night in late January it all started to change. I came home late from work to find my wife using the Instant Pot! I have to admit, the meal she cooked was pretty good, but secretively I was a little upset. I was not about to let her one-up me with the use of the Instant Pot, so I began searching for and
Post a Comment
Read more

At The Edge of The Diving Board

Am I ready for this? Are my students ready for this? Is it too late to turn back? What will my students think if I turn back? Did I prepare them well enough? Should I spend more time going over the different stations? Will this work? All of these questions and so many more were flying around in my head as I looked out at my first period math class who were about to begin the blended learning station rotation model. Then I was able to take a breath which gave me a sense of calm. It was in that moment I saw the excitement in my students' faces. I saw their belief in me. I realized they were craving something new, something different, something meaningful, and something that they can take with them for years that will help them in THEIR future. So, I jumped off that "diving board" and into the blended learning model. I came up splashing and reaching for that edge of the pool, and as I made it over there I realized it was fun, exciting, engaging, and yes, messy, but als
Post a Comment
Read more