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.
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