I’m not sure whether I feel more like the Ghost of School Year Past or the Ghost of School Future. When US colleagues are relieved to be finished with the Covid-19-affected school year, I'm still living it. On the other hand, when they wonder what it will be like to start a new year in distance learning, I've already done that. And I've lived several variations of "returning."
I’m at an international Christian school in Japan which operates on the Japanese school year. That means we tried online school for the closing weeks of the past academic year at the beginning of March. Then in late March, just as US schools were moving to distance learning, we ended the school year. We’d hoped to begin the new school year in mid-April in person, but that was not to be. We’ve been through a variety of plans and permutations of plans. After 6 weeks of distance learning (technically 7, but one was mostly holidays for Japanese Golden Week), we began inching back to the physical classroom—but then stalled out at all students present (masked) for 35-minute shortened periods (allowing a late start to miss crowded commuter trains).
Every time there is a shift, I feel myself begin to worry—How will this affect my planning and student learning? Everything feels up in the air all over again. I feel that same worry from other educators on social media wondering what school will look like in the fall and how they can prepare.
Then I breath deeply and ask myself, “What are the big rocks that have to happen in my class?” They are not particular works of literature or particular assignments. They are not even, when push comes to shove, the standards and benchmarks. On the biggest level, they are this: “Are students learning to read, write, think, listen, and speak?” Then my blood pressure comes down and I think, “Yes. Yes, they are learning that.”
We drop one short story in order to preserve independent reading time—because among other things, this is setting them up for a habit of reading when the summer holidays start, and the expectation of reading whatever the fall may bring (see here). We may have missed a grammar lesson or two to preserve time for writing, because right now, I can see them writing in real time, and I can conference with them about their writing. Right now I know I have 35 minutes 5 times a week with them. At least for today, for this week, probably for next week, too. What learning do I most want to cement from the past and set them up for in the future? That’s what I will do for the next week, and that’s what I will put in my exam the following week.
How will I plan over the summer? I’ll think about how to help my students continue to grow as readers, writers, thinkers, listeners, and speakers. I’ll review my standards. I’ll learn a little more about what technology is available to me by reading Jennifer Gonzales's The Teacher’s Guide to Tech 2020. I’ll learn more about what content is available by further exploring CommonLit. I’ll revisit resources about specific teaching strategies like teaching grammar in context (Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson), reading/writing workshop (180 Days by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle), and writing (Teaching Arguments by Jennifer Fletcher and They Say/I Say by Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff). I’ll keep reading middle grade books to have more recommendations for my students (see here and here). I’ll think about the big rocks of what I want my students to be able to know, understand, and be able to do: read, write, think, listen, and speak. And I’ll think about assessments that will allow students to demonstrate that growth. The actual strategies and lesson plans—those can wait until I know whether we’ll be in person or online, with 35-minute periods or 45-minute periods.
We can do this. Remember the big rocks. Check out Jennifer Gonzales's recent refresher on Backward Design: The Basics. What is your vision for your students?
No comments:
Post a Comment