Jekyll and Hyde

Originally posted August 20, 2013

This is the part where, if this blog was a movie, the screen would go dark and say, "Two Months Later..."

I am writing this with two weeks left of summer before the students return and this whole experiment becomes a reality. It has been a great summer of planning, thinking,reading, writing, revising, and hoping. I have poured over spreadsheets as I align lesson plans and units to the Common Core Standards. I have created and then scrapped lesson plans and materials. I have created a variety of different outlines for the major project that we will be doing. I have spent a tremendous amount of time with my family. I have gotten a lot of great woodshop time building toys for my boys and things for our home for my wife.

Things are good.

But there is something that has been nagging at me since I first sat down to do the heavy lifting required to get an endeavor like this off the ground. I continue to struggle with this notion of extremes. I have always struggled with this as an individual, and while I have gained ground in controlling it, there are times when it does indeed get the best of me. I remember being a kid and my parents talking to me about how I was a "black and white thinker." I have spent much of my adult life not only trying to find the gray, but also asking whether there is in fact anything inherently wrong with being a black and white thinker. Without going on too much of a tangent, I have found that there are certainly times when being a black and white thinker creates significant challenges for me. However, there are a few times when it has actually helped. Much like I have overcome my disposition to be a procrastinator, I have found ways to counter my black and white tendencies. Since procrastination and black and white thinking is my nature, I have had to be quite diligent about making planning and "gray-thinking" my habit. After years of being deliberate about forcing myself to address these areas of my thinking, I feel I have come to a place where I am what I would call a "recovering black and white thinker and procrastinator."

This summer has certainly challenged that "recovery" status.

As I have applied all of the theories I have ever read about what makes for great teaching, I have also been questioning myself at the same time. As I dive head first into this thing called Project Based Learning, I have been wrestling with not only how it can or should be best structured in my classroom, I have wrestled with myself and that old tendency toward black and white thinking. I have thought long and hard about the type of environment I want to create for my students. I have constantly kept at the forefront of my mind that I want this year to be different for not only my disenfranchised students, but all of my students as well. I want to harness that natural curiosity and sense of awe that kids have, and just throw heaps and heaps of fuel on the flame that, unfortunately, used to be a roaring fire prior to coming to school. But that's where Jekyll and Hyde show up. One minute I feel that I am significantly over-planning this year and that it will not be any different than past years. I fear that I have planned spontaneity and authenticity right out the window. Then I start to fear that I have not planned enough. It has been a constant struggle trying to get an accurate assessment of the work that I have done and whether I am indeed "ready" for the students to return.

The thing is, much like being a black and white thinker by nature, I also struggle with perfectionism and the need to have all my ducks constantly in a row. That's my nature. I want to have plans for things. My first year teaching I had this grand delusion that to be really ready for the school year, I had to have all my handouts printed and copied. I had to have all the websites we would go to on a neat list somewhere. I needed to know everything about everything.

Yeah. I know.

The majority of that thinking stemmed from fearing going blank while standing in front of the students. I didn't know if I could think on my feet or if I would just be a deer in headlights. In fact, when I was student teaching, my fear of this was so great that I typed out six pages of notes for each math lesson that was part of an already quite scripted program. I need to plan. Not only plan, but plan in advance. I have to know very clearly where we  are going, how I want us to get there, all the potential barriers for students and how I will overcome them. But what I have found while I am right there in the trenches, is that I absolutely love to throw out my lesson plans and do what my students need right in that moment. I thrive on spontaneity. I love thinking on my feet. I treasure those times, not when everything went according to my plan, but when we threw the plan out the window and still got to the target destination in a way that was organic and authentic to what my students needed right then and there.

So all that is to say that it has been tough planning. How do you plan to appease that perfectionist -ducks-in-a-row side, as well as leave room for the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants side. If anyone knows, please let me know because I am still trying to figure it out. What I have tried my best to do is to create what I think is a great safety net. The plans that I have made will get us all to the different checkpoints we need to make it to. It takes into account different learning styles, abilities, personalities, the whole nine yards. There is flexibility built right in to make sure that all of the needs of all of my students are addressed and met. It is not perfect by any means, but I am proud of the work that I have done. But to be honest, I kind of hope I throw the whole thing out. I have given enough thought and done enough work to know the learning targets for my students, and if I need to completely re-route how we get there and when we get there, I know that I will be thrilled to do so. Make no mistake, I am terrified as well. Even though I am proud of the work I have done, I am certain it can be done better. I am certain that there are flaws that I cannot even see right now. Jekyll is feeling good and ready to go. Hyde thinks the plan won't work and this is all going to go up in a blaze of glory. Jekyll thinks I have overplanned, but in a good way. Hyde thinks that everyone will think I haven't planned enough and am just running some kind of camp. They constantly bicker with each other, and I find myself believing whoever it is that is speaking.

Yikes.

At the end of the day, I need to keep going back to finding the middle ground. Even if I don't land there, knowing where the middle ground is has helped me with my black and white thinking. What truly excites me most right now is that with all of this self-doubt and nervousness and perfectionism, I have a great opportunity to model to my students exactly what we will be learning this year: how to learn. I am very open to being very open about my struggles and challenges with this whole endeavor. I want my students to see that learning and creating is a messy, challenging, exhilarating process. I want to be open about the triumphs and the failures as I seek to create this new program. If I can make an impact on my students by being open about my struggles and triumphs with creating this program, then I feel I can put up with the battle of Jekyll and Hyde a bit longer.

The Meeting

Originally posted June 18, 2013

All the philosophizing, all the questioning, all the planning, all the wondering, all the anticipating paused for a moment as I got to meet next year's students for the first time today. It was a bit different than what I had planned: a 2-3 hour get-together consisting of team building activities, food, questions to and from the students, and generally a "get to know ya" time. Because of crazy schedules that span three grade levels, I met with the upcoming 8th graders and upcoming 7th graders separately during the lunch periods instead.

What the meeting lacked in quantity of time it certainly made up for in quality. The incredibly generous food service providers cooked up eight pizzas especially for us from kits that were left over from an 8th grade fundraiser earlier in the year. I printed up business card-sized notes that had the students' name on it and just "6.18.13  11:55  Conference Room" underneath. All black with white print. We handed those out to students this morning and tried to create a sense of both mystery and excitement. I believe it worked.

To see the students sitting around the conference room table, eating pizza and smiling while talking about school felt like it was a major accomplishment in and of itself. I shared a brief version of what next year's program will look like, answered questions, cracked some jokes, asked them what they wanted or needed out of the program, and bonded with students who have been, shall we say "disenfranchised" with, and or by, school.

While I have held the belief that this new program and approach to learning is what is best for "students," it was an amazing situation to have the abstract "student" replaced with my students. With unique names. With unique laughs. With unique personalities. With unique backgrounds, learning styles, quirks, talents. With unique fears. With unique hopes.

I end the day today reflecting on those faces and voices I saw and heard today. While I do not yet know their whole stories or the point at which school became a burden, I know that something must change for them. Whether it was real or simply imagined I cannot truly say, but while we were talking about what school would be for them next year I swear that I saw hope in their eyes. I hope that I do not let them down. I hope that they can truly say that next year is the best year that they have ever had in school. I hope that we can rekindle that fire for learning that was once an inferno in their childhood minds. I hope to teach them to embrace awe, wonder, and amazement of the world around us. I hope that I can be what they need me to be.

I hope...

And So it Begins...

Originally posted June 12, 2013

Well, the title is a bit misleading. This whole project-based journey started multiple years ago when I first heard about inquiry-based learning. I have been dabbling in it and bringing elements of it into my class since my first year teaching. Now, however, begins an entirely new chapter as I build, or attempt to build, a new "program" for my school.

It has only been several months since I first wrote my dream scenario for a new path at my school and met with the administrators to discuss what that path might look like. From the first talks with my assistant principal where we both dreamed aloud about what education could be, to this day in June as I make my first blog post about the journey, I have been filled with a mixture of excitement, anticipation, joy, fear, guilt, and self-doubt. Sometimes all of those things at once. With every article that I read, every video I watch, with every spreadsheet or word document that I create, I keep saying to myself over and over again, "I can't believe I get to do this." I get the opportunity to design a path that will meet the needs of all my students in a way that a traditional classroom cannot.

As I pour over standards, create spreadsheets, research elements for the major project, meet with other teachers, and countless other aspects of building the program, two individuals keep coming to the forefront of my mind. One is a current student for whom the traditional classroom does not work. He is very bright, adds depth to our conversation, but does not complete any work or apply himself. The other individual is my four year old son. He is incredibly inquisitive, loves to look at books, was born to be outdoors, and has a genuine love for learning. I see in my son a deep sense of awe, wonder, and amazement of the world around him. There are no limits to what he is interested in or wants to know. His passion for learning is a roaring fire that engulfs everything in its path. My fear for my son is that once he gets into school, that fire will be extinguished by the push for teaching to the test, meeting standards, or anything else that puts my son's scores rather than his learning at the center of importance. I do not want him to have the same experience as that student of mine. I want to create a path and environment for students that heaps loads of fuel onto that fire for learning. That embraces our collective sense of awe, wonder, and amazement of our world and runs with it. Rather than continuing to complain or ask why my students won't change, I am choosing to change me. My strategies. My methods. My structure. My outlook. I want to provide multiple paths to student success, make content and materials accessible to all learning styles and ability levels, embrace hands-on learning, foster creativity and individuality, and use student questions to navigate learning. I want my students to have my same recurring thought, "I can't believe I get to do this."

That is the goal. My hope is that I can update this blog on a regular basis, though I have never been great at doing this in the past. I suppose that if I am too busy meeting with students or tweaking (or overhauling) my teaching practices, missing entries on this blog will be of little consequence. I hope to look back on this to see the journey as it goes through all the terrain that it will surely traverse. One of the toughest patches right now is moving forward despite the fact that there are those who are less than pleased with either me or this new idea. While I want to be honest about this journey, I do not want this space to be a venue to just vent. Of course, I am in a pretty good mood right now and my position on this matter may change. But there it is. There are many details of the journey so far that I have not recorded, but will perhaps explain in the days to come. There is much to do and I hope to record the efforts here.

That I have this opportunity to teach is a privilege and an awesome responsibility that I do not take lightly. I believe that individuals can change the world and I believe that teachers do and will play a significant role in this change. While not every student is going to change the world as a whole, I believe that teachers can and should empower their students to change their world, however broad or limited the scope. I walk into my classroom everyday with the both the sense of joy and the weight of responsibility that comes with this belief.

And so it begins...

A New Path in Mr. Coleman's Class Link