When I found out that we were going to be having ongoing PD, I was tentatively hopeful that having one person walk with the social studies department for the whole year might actually be valuable. I figured that as they got to know us they would be able to eventually give us pointers that would help us as a department. I thought this would take session upon session to achieve, but after just the first two sessions, I realized how much of a fog I have been in for the past two years. Between Covid and maternity leave I feel like everything Rubin shared with us was lost gold. As I was writing down takeaways, I was thinking to myself how did I forget this stuff?? What have I been doing for the past two years??

I am not saying that all standards and good teaching has fallen by the wayside but upon reflection from PD and student feedback – between Covid protocols and writing 8 weeks of sub plans for maternity leave last spring so much of what my students were getting from me, especially in AP Psych was passive, self paced learning. To be perfectly candid as I was reading the surveys from the students I am writing letters of rec for, I was horrified to see how many students described how they struggled with what I considered to be brilliantly planned self paced units. It was just a wake up call to step it back up and take the best from what I learned during Covid and to ditch the rest. 

I am ditching:

• Self paced units. I got enough feedback to know my students were not into this. I am seeing much more desire from students in a post covid classroom to do less on your own work and more teacher/student led assignments. Students seem to recognize that free time to work does not actually mean work will be happening for them and as their outside of school lives ramp back up I think it is important for me to hold space for them to work with a certain level of accountability. 

• Assuming that all students should come with certain skills. A lot was lost in the Covid years. It was also hard to gage who was following you or lost when teaching on zoom. I think to be honest I forgot to check in a lot last year about what students knew vs. what gaps there were. In our first open note test of the year Frosh World History students had a pretty underwhelming performance over all. The biggest thing I saw was students struggling to take effective and organized notes. Note taking is honestly a skill that I consider a “given” when it comes to high school. Not anymore! Thanks to Ally and others in the department notes are now being scaffolded in a much more strategic way – hoping this works in the next unit. 

• Electronic feedback for more in-person live feedback as a less confident teacher I provided as much feedback as I could via google docs or power school because I hated the hard in person conversation giving students feedback they probably didn’t want to hear. Distance learning really made this habit entrenched. I am really trying to actively be mindful of giving feedback in person, especially when a student is struggling and I know a quick conversation will go farther than an email that may not be read.

• Group work that lasts more than one class period. I love and hate group work. Rubin both affirmed why teachers liked it, but hit the nail on the head about its issues – a teacher (usually) has no idea how much an individual student knows or contributed to the final product. Group work often leads to some students carrying the load while other students skate through – I do know that some teachers in my department have mastered group projects. I have not. For now I am going to limit group work to only SHORT and LOW STAKES classwork.

I am doubling down on:

• Using every minute of class time. I know as teachers we are supposed to use every minute of class time but let’s be honest if we ever walk through the halls on our preps during the last 4 minutes of class not all of us are. While we may reserve the last 5 minutes of class for students to start on a homework assignment 

• Checks for understanding- I do WAY TOO MUCH ASSUMING in class that everyone is following me/the content. See my point above. Especially in AP Psych. I am upping my check for understanding the game as much as possible this year in a way that is not boring exit tickets or quizzes. Last week in AP Psych when reviewing the endocrine system I gave students a scenario of being at Thanksgiving with their cousin who just had a baby, their crush, their racist uncle, and the rest of their family and had them write down all of the hormones that might be running through people’s blood stream. They definitely took creative liberties and I got to see way more of their personalities when we shared out, rather than just having them post their ideas on Schoology. It was clear they knew the endocrine system!  

• You, We, Me  Another very basic teacher move that I rediscovered is similar to the think, pair, share move. Here the teacher demonstrates. Students practice together. And then students manipulate content on their own. This is teaching 101 I get it but like I said I needed a reboot. I think sometimes I disregard certain teaching strategies as too basic for high schoolers – lol oops. Today in class we analyzed the Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen. I began by showing students how to annotate a primary source. They did it at their tables and shared out. Finally students annotated on their own – once again I get this isn’t rocket science but I was really impressed with what some of my struggling students were able to do on their own with the right scaffolding. 

• The Think Aloud Rubin also encouraged us all to practice the think aloud. Once again I thought that this was more of a Math or elementary school strategy. This is where you explain YOUR thought process as you go through a problem so that students can see how you THINK about a problem. I put this to the test after the UNIT 1 Psych test. I took the 11 most missed questions and recorded myself talking through how to successfully navigate each of these questions. I am still waiting on student feedback but I am really hoping that this builds metacognition around multiple choice test questions. 

Can you relate to feeling like you are needing to remind yourself of the basics? What have you ditched this year? What are you making a priority in terms of teaching strategies this year?