Dear 2019 May Self,
Hi! Remember when you were this
young? And remember how in the past you have made students write letters to the
incoming kids in your class with various prompts of “what would you do
differently?” and “what did you like and wish to change about this class?” ?
Then remember when you had an epiphany sometime in April 2019 about writing a
letter to yourself, your older more rested end-of-August self that will be the “new
teacher in class”? Great. Do it.
What do you want to remember about
this year and about what to do or change or keep or stress in your 23rd
year of teaching next year. Remember that you had on the agenda to teach for
2019-2020: Algebra 1 preAP, AP Calculus
AB, Precalculus preAP, Digital Electronics, and APCS-A. Aaaaah, good times.
Wow. What a year! Is there any year
you don’t think this? If you recall, you taught: Algebra 1 preAP, AP Calculus
AB, Digital Electronics, and APCS-A. Here are some thoughts and things you want
to remember for next year.
Life/General Things/All Classes:
· No
one likes to be “yelled at”. I know you didn’t yell at her, but remember that time you chastised a student in
front of the whole class for being on her cell phone. Yes, you were thinking of
5,000 things, yes, you were tired, but it turned out she was done with what you
had been asking them to do and was just waiting for the next thing. Then she
shut down for the rest of the class. Good thing you apologized properly, but
still. Figure out a way to either humorously get the same task done or don’t
even go there.
·
Remember
that you are teaching students and not Information-Inhalers. Make sure to ask
after them and check in with how things are. Remember the student with family
cancer issues. Remember the student Ms. L talked about who just blurted out in
her college essay prep about the horrific things going on at home. You need to
check in more frequently.
·
Remember
how good it felt to choose fun instead of endless work. Remember you soaked up
weekend fun and were all refreshed inside and out as Monday rolled around?
Remember to not take work home because it’s usually just a field trip for
papers.
·
Remember
to hang around with teachers that are not “mean girls”. Life is too short for
that.
·
Remember
your idea of starting this document early in the year so that you could write
these things down as they came up and you wouldn’t potentially forget them.
·
After
22 years, I have jumped on the grade for accuracy bandwagon. I let them redo
homeworks to build up points, but remember how they worked harder to understand
because of this.
·
Answer
Banks rule.
Algebra 1:
·
They
are little puppy dogs who pee on the rug, but they are super cute and fun to be
around aside from the constant chatter and off-task behavior. Soak up their
cuteness and their ability to be amused by silliness.
·
After
looking at a kid’s notebook and seeing that it was not helpful at all, you
realized you had to do a better job of making notes that they could easily
refer to and figure out what’s what after time passes. Hey! Better page titles
that specify skill. Hey! If you hand out a “cool” assignment to finish in class
that will “solve ALL THEIR PROBLEMS” and are all impressed with yourself,
remember the ½ sheets that had them solve various types of special quadratic
equations on 4 separate ½ sheets that each had a different color. You rushed
them through apparently. You never went back and checked they did it right. You
never made them link each sheet to a generic “what type of problem is it”. You
never then practiced just that and made sure they went back to use this
resource. Winning! Things like this had/have potential, but you need extra time
with it.
·
Holy
Moly, you need to find the strugglers early in the year and FORCE them to come
in frequently for tutoring. You can’t rely on your “they are in HS now and have
to fend for themselves and learn how to ‘student’ “ attitude. They are babies.
They still need hand holding. Don’t be a loser, Dadmehr! Remember how cute they
are. Remember how after Z. and E. came in at the end of the year, they pulled
up their grades.
·
Use
the power of parents. A quick email home may get the little kidlet in and doing
work lickety split.
AP Calculus AB:
·
Who
would have thought? You need a word wall or some sort of vocabulary resource.
Remember when after ½ the year went by and then you had a student ask you what
a word meant. I don’t remember the word, but I do remember thinking, “geez, how
did you do so well before on tests and homework when you have no clue what this
word means?”. Don’t assume. Don’t just mention periodically, “if you don’t know
a word, ask”. They won’t/don’t. You need to push the issue. And do it effectively.
·
Remember
that around early May, FINALLY 2 seniors, LP and YR who had been struggling all
year and never completing homework on time and never coming for help and never
asking for help in class finally came in for help on Volumes of Revolution. And
how proud they were when they got 100% on a quiz. And LP’s comment, “Is that
all it is? I thought it would be way harder.”
·
Remember
also to force these kids to come in for help. You need a better system other
than just putting it on them. What about you once a 6 weeks schedule a 5-minute
session to gauge things. And they get individual attention. Then you can see
how things really stand and set up a mandatory system for them to get more
help. Can you map out class time for one-on-one?
·
Oh,
and that reminds me. Some of their EOY comments about my tutoring time being so
overcrowded that they couldn’t get help needs to be addressed. Can you
designate one time a week where it’s only ONE subject and not everyone?
·
Remember
to adjust the number of hwk problems. It was too much to grade and for them to
do.
·
The
formative quizzes worked great. Thank you AP Annual Conference Guy who shared
his idea. I liked that they could redo. I liked the 6/5 points and ½ page-ness.
·
Remember
not to provide worked-out keys. They started to use them for evil and not good.
Even the kids who were “good at calculus” got lazy. See earlier comment about
grading on accuracy.
·
Oh!
Change homework structure so that it’s DUE next class ideally, or within 1 week
of handing it out if they want (eventual?) full credit. They can redo, but if
the first time they do it is way later, the grade needs to represent that. This
seemed to work out well so that they didn’t procrastinate tooooo much and they
didn’t stress too much about finishing it in 2 days and then just being sloppy
with it.
·
MORE
FRQS all through the year.
DE:
·
OMG
how did you lose so much time and not have time for 4 major topics? Too much
time on soldering? Too much time on SSD project? Figure it out, Missy.
·
Geezus,
remember their breadboards for the SSD project. Here are some things you need
to teach better: (videos? Notes? Other?) jumping, stripping not too much, XYZ
switches and how you do NOT attach both X and notX to power and ground, for
example, not using the same row to jump for different paths, not using the same
row to jump for itself, you can’t jump via columns, Hey, Dadmehr, you should
really check their Multisim printout before they start to breadboard. Some kids
who didn’t finish in time, printed it out and then way later you found out that
they had done the pin numbers wrong or wrote them in or it wasn’t even working
on Multisim.
·
Hey!
Map out the timeline of the whole year in August. Do it! Do it, trust me …… put
in the bajillion days they will be gone for Internship and ARS stuff and life.
Then stick to it otherwise you will run out of time.
·
Hey,
you did a great job on the SSD ½ sheets that helped them map out pin numbers
and gates and chips and such. Do that again.
APCS-A:
·
Remember
CL and BO and how you need extra scaffolding all the time.
·
Remember
WORD WALLS.
·
Remember
that homework is good.
·
Remember
how you Loved Practice-It.
·
Remember
your FRQ scaffolding at the beginning of the year. Do more of that.
·
Projects!
Why did you stop.
·
Map
out time. You ran out.
·
4
weeks (3?) was great for review. Schedule for it.
·
More
Class stuff and method writing.
·
Greenfoot
at the start of the year?
·
Love
how you are hungry now and are rushing and this last section is “less”.