Traveling the Education Road

School vacation will finally give me a day
to dig into this awesome book.  Can't wait!

It was a bit of a bumpy path this week as I stuffed a lot of curriculum into one short teaching/learning week. Was it the best decision? I think it was important, though challenging, to review that laundry list of important concepts, knowledge, and skills this week--it was the right time in the year for this big review. Now we can return to the words, concepts, skills, and knowledge shared again and again in the days ahead as we solidify multiplication knowledge, explore volume, learn and review division, and then focus on fractions in multiple ways. We needed to have this common knowledge to move forward--it was a challenging week of learning math for many reasons.

Sometimes we choose the charrette--the dedicated, challenging, all-in time to move our collective study ahead; sometimes it is the right move in any organization. In a sense it's like the all-in effort that occurs during a big home clean-up or building project. It's arduous, disruptive, and busy, busy, busy.

Now at the end of this week of push, I'm looking out there to a couple of weeks of the kind of teaching I love most, the sensitive, student-centered, deep teaching that occurs as children work to solidify skills and extend their learning with engaging project work. Students are generally happy during this kind of learning and I am there to answer their questions, support their inquiry, and challenge them in ways they look forward to. Students will learn this way as they forward their own learning via taking an online/offline practice test, completing practice exercises, and using their creativity for a holiday volume project.

I'm also looking at ways that we can deepen our "All stop and read" efforts. Colleagues who are reading specialists and who dedicate their efforts to planning and teaching most of our ELA curriculum are a great source of inspiration and support in this effort. Students are also doing a great job with this, and we're becoming an even stronger community of readers.

Next week I'll take a close look at students' tests and related practice too and use that data, in part, to inform the upcoming January report cards.

I'll complete student teacher paperwork as well. Having a terrific student teacher has been a tremendous bonus for me as the teacher in the room and for the students.

Then I'll also spend some prep time in the days ahead too preparing for the start-of-January division unit, a unit for which I have lots of good teaching materials. The holidays will finally give me time to read Timeless Learning, a book I can't wait to read and to finish reading Michelle Obama's wonderful autobiography, Becoming. 

My teaching/learning role this year is mainly to dig into the curriculum and research with a focus on improving my craft to teach each child as well as I can. This deep dive is arduous at times, but also proving to increase my ability to teach well.

Every educator's education road is densely packed with limitless opportunity to learn more, do more, and work better. To continually reflect on where you are and where you are going is essential in order to travel this path with integrity, skill, and ability. Onward.