When I think about the way that I ran my classroom as a first year teacher, I have a lot of questions for myself. Mostly, WHY?
Below are some of the things that I have changed my opinion on – or have decided to do differently moving forward.
Bathroom Freedom versus Bathroom Passes
When I first started teaching I gave students bathroom passes. Any unused bathroom passes at the end of the semester was worth extra credit. I absolutely hate that I used to do this to students. I used to have students that would mention how bad they had to go to the bathroom but wouldn’t because they wanted the extra credit. While I was trying to incentivise students to avoid going to the bathroom in class everyday, I really was forgetting that they are human beings and probably won’t learn much if all they’re thinking about is not peeing their pants.
I now allow students to go to the bathroom without hesitation or question. I have maybe one or two students that abuse this policy for the year, but that means 99% of my students don’t and they know that I know they’re human. I’ll take that as a win. Also if you’re trying to argue that you’re not on a schedule – I don’t relate and understand that some students will need to use the bathroom in my class every day! This year our school has made this even better by introducing a lock box so that students must put their phone in before leaving the classroom. It wasn’t too much of an issue beforehand, but now the amount of students requesting bathroom passes have significantly dropped. In addition to this, they are spending less time out of the classroom as well!
Working Harder not Smarter versus Working Smarter not Harder
In my first year as a teacher, I was at school at 5am and then stayed after school until 6pm. YIKES. I’m not saying that a first year teacher doesn’t have to put in some extra work but 6 extra hours a day is actually insane. As a type A individual it was hard for me to not reinvent the wheel or decide that something was going to be “good enough” for the sake of setting work life balance. I would spend hours creating, printing, keying, and making sure every aspect of the lesson was thought out and properly planned. Every single question I was going to ask, every single data point recorded, every single question beautifully worked out to ensure I knew it. It took a couple of years to get to where I am now – but I think I could have gotten there soon with the help of a mentor and some resources on healthy work-life balance. It is much easier to work with materials, TRUST your coworkers, and fill in some spots on the fly.
Here is some evidence of me as a first year teacher. All I needed to do was print out some “extra practice” sheets for students who were looking for additional support. I could have easily used Kuta, but I’m sure I made these packets question by question. Then I made full blown answer keys (again, which Kuta could have done for me) and put together this elaborate space in my classroom for something that did not need an elaborate space. This is evidence of me working harder and definitely not smarter:
As I continue through my years of teaching I am always looking for ways to work smarter and not harder. At the end of the day, I always remind myself that my family, friends, and myself need me more than the school does and that usually puts things into perspective.
Bulletin Boards
In my first couple of years I wasn’t really sure how I wanted to do boards. I think that I initially had thought I would be changing it every couple of months. Over time, I learned that was something I could not keep up with nor did I want to keep up with. I initially had a board up that was the current unit’s outcomes, goals, and assignments. Then every unit I would print out the next unit, laminate them, and put them up. I bet the students DID NOT EVEN LOOK AT IT. As you can see below, I eventually gave up on that and started to hang up the student’s artwork. The Sudoku board was cool (and interactive) but the pieces kept falling apart and again, I would have to update it every week with a new Sudoku setup. This is just not sustainable for a teacher.
After two years I finally found what I use every year now – my chutes and ladders board. This has been a big hit and I haven’t had to modify it once it has been up. If you want to read more about how this interactive game works, check out my post on it here.
Again, a lot of these things come with time – and I can only imagine what I will be saying about myself ten years from now. If we aren’t reflecting and improving on our teaching methods then we aren’t growing with the students we are teaching. Stay tuned – I’m sure there will be more of these to come.
Ms. Pi 4 Ever 