After feeling quite defeated by what seemed like too-tight parameters for good teaching, we had a great meeting yesterday that essentially enabled us to revise those parameters a bit in order to teach all the students well. That feels really good because now I can be creative once again and work with my colleagues to sensitively and responsively teach all of our students. In a sense the dam that was holding back creativity and good teaching has been adapted so that we can work together to use our creativity, knowledge, and experience to teach well.
How does this translate into action?
Room Renovation
Once again the room needs a good renovation since there's been considerable revision in the teaching/learning program in order to respond to the students well. This will take some hours, and will probably take place over the holiday break or as soon as school starts again.
Math RTI
Essentially all of our RTI groups will work on activities related to building number sense related to problem solving and multiplication and division of whole numbers and decimals. I'm excited about the opportunity to embed financial literacy lessons into this work.
Math Core
I'll intersect problem solving skills and strategies with lessons related to decimal computation, skills, and concepts. Then we'll move into the study of fractions which is a lot of fun.
Field Study
We'll embark on a few field studies which require some prep and organization.
Frederick Douglass and Cultural Proficiency
Our team needs to make some time to focus on the next steps for the Frederick Douglas and Cultural Proficiency study goals. We'll likely focus some time on that over vacation and when we return to school in January.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Study Group
After the holidays, I'll refocus my efforts in this direction. I have a lot of catch-up study and writing to do.
DESE TAC
Once I finish the SEL study, I'll do my homework for the Teacher's Advisory Council
Educon
I'll use Educon as the focus for a weekend of professional study at the end of January.
Resource Organization
I want to organize the many, many resources I have for teaching well--resources online and offline. I suspect that this will be a focus task for the summer months.
The teaching/learning route has been reset thankfully and now it's time to focus on the holidays ahead.
