I’ve been procrastinating on getting ready for school. Now that school is a few weeks away from starting I decided to start getting ready. Well, I tried but I haven’t been able to start anything. There are so many things floating around in my head that I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START!
I can’t remember being this scattered.
I would be so much happier if I could just figure out what I want to do so that I can get started and DO IT! LoL
I did read two books this summer to help me think things through, Quit Point by Adam Chamberlin and Sveti Matejic, and George Couros’s The Innovator’s Mindset, and I think maybe that’s why I have so many ideas going round and round in my head. I need to narrow these thoughts into some concrete ideas for the first week of school! One complication to starting off a new school year is that we take our6th graders to this amazing camp, Camp Cispus, on the second week of school! It’s amazing getting to know our new 6th graders by spending three days and three nights at the camp having some great fun and bonding but it does delay starting any class routines for the 6th graders. What’s worse, I teach 8th grade Science as well and a 7/8 Robotics/Programming class and I’ll be gone the entire second week of school. That really disrupts those classes and makes starting again after Cispus annoying. That and deciding what to do the first week that is engaging and fun while not entirely setting up my routines that a sub may or may not be able to replicate.
So taking Cispus into consideration, here are the things I know for sure that I just need to get setup at some point:
- I’m going to use Classcraft with all of my classes (my two 6th grade Science classes, my two 8th grade Science classes, my semester-long 7/8 Robotics/Programming classes, and my after school tech club).
- I’m going to continue to use Rezzly with my 6th graders because I have my entire year, 170 quests, all set up in there. Even though I used a brand new curriculum last year, STEM Robotics 101, I still managed to setup most of the quests on Rezzly for that new curriculum so that will go more smoothly this year (I hope!).
- I’m going to use Classcraft’s Quests feature INSTEAD of Rezzly for my 8th graders! This is a huge change for me and I’m going to try it out on my 8th graders. I had most of them in 6th grade, where they used Rezzly only so I can really see how Rezzly compares to Classcraft with a group of students that will have used them both. I’m excited to see what they think to help me decide how to proceed in the future. This will require quite a bit of work as I create all the quests on Classcraft that I created last year on Rezzly for the 8th grade Science curriculum, IQWST, which was also brand new (yeah, I had two new curricula last year!).
- Speaking of setup, I also need to setup the brand new course I’ll be teaching for the 7/8 Robotics/Programming course and get the assignments on Classcraft as well. I’ll be using the STEM Robotics 102 course.
- Luckily, thanks to Steve Isaacs, a Teacher from New Jersey who shared his game design/programming Classcraft curriculum with other teachers, I have a head start on my after school tech club program. I just need to go over what Steve shared and tweak it for my kids.
- We also have an advisory group and I need to figure out what they’ll be doing the first week of school and then after the camp.
Those are the things I know for sure I need to do and even though I’m trying to focus on that first week for the 6th graders and projects that the others classes can do with a sub that first AND second week, I’m not sure where to start so I’m having a hard time starting!
One decision I had made in June was to finally give the strategies I’ve been reading about on the Smart Classroom Management blog (SCM) a try. I have hesitated to implement a classroom management strategy that sticks to a set plan and doesn’t waver from it because it’s not my natural style. My comfort level is to treat issues as they come up and deal with kids, not rules. While I do have routines, expectations, and structures I don’t have any set rules. Our district got trained last year on the CHAMPS model and I used it and liked the structure it gives kids.
According to SCM, what I do is not very effective and I have to agree because my most challenging classes do not run smoothly quite often. SCM claims that their method leads to smooth running classrooms. I’ve been reading their blog for years now and haven’t implemented their style because I know that I would have a very difficult time sticking to a set plan. But I was ready to take the leap. I say was because after reading the Quit Point book I was reminded of why I use my method beyond it being my natureal style. I handle situations on a per kid basis because I want to empower kids to manage themselves. I don’t wan to be the one constantly managing all my students. I mean, maybe that sounds like a cop out but that’s a good goal, to empower students to manage themselves. I try to achieve that goal, or get closer to it every year, by providing students clear structures, routines, and guidelines along with giving them choice and voice along with fun and engaging activities. And some of that is right in line with the SCM method so I am using as much as I have learned in all of the 27 years I’ve been teaching and all the trainings and workshops I’ve attended and all the blogs and books I’ve read.
And even after all that, I still don’t succeed all the time! Maybe that’s what drew me to the Quit Point book. It was the first book of its sort that admitted that our stragies don’t always work. That no matter how perfect our activities are, how clear our expectations are, how many times we’ve taught our routines, kids will misbehave and disrupt and they’ll do it for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with me. It was so refreshing to read a book that shared experiences similiar to my own, that no set of strategies will be perfect and work every time, instead of always reading about how this strategy will fix everything wrong in my classroom that I just had to read it.
Now I’m wondering if I should keep tweaking my own style or go back to my plan to try it the SCM way. I don’t know. And part of why I’m not sure how to start is that I see how much work I have to do and I don’t want to do it! It’s still summer btw, even though today we got the welcome back email from our superintendent with dates of our back to school meetings. Oh well, I guess I just need to buckle down, pick where to start, and get to work!
