Tester

I certainly have goals for my teaching moving forward. I came from a time when there was more chalk and talk and I am aware that my default teaching mode is similar to that. My main goal is to have more discovery based and project based learning in my class. This year I am trying to introduce more of this in the class. At the same time I am trying to release a bit more power to the class. This will be a fine balancing act. There are standards for the content kids should know, and thus giving too much power to the class may mean that we go off in tangents from the material unless I am careful, but I think encouraging curiosity has to be an important part of my work as a teacher. If they have no interest in learning they will not succeed going forward. I have seen some recent success with this. In some literacy exercises, when we close read articles, my worksheets have ended asking students what questions they now have, and for them to read an associated article of their choice and m

I try not to let pride get in the way of me doing my job, and I always run emails in delicate situations by others just so I don’t cause waves or make my own someone else life more difficult. There are counsellors, my department chair and members of the administration who have read and ok’ed or altered emails in the past. But there was one incident last year when I did not fully objectify the situation before sending the email. I got a tepid “if that’s what you want to say…” response from one of my usual checkers and feeling like I got some things of my chest I sent the email. Now the student is a nice guy but his executive functioning is not what you would wish it to be and this leads to difficulties in keeping up, getting his work done and staying focused. Even staying awake. I was unusually sympathetic to this because I feel he was being pushed unreasonably hard at home. There was even whisperings of trying AP subjects in his Junior year. I feel these would have amounted to