Reality Check: Five Things I’ve Abandoned in My Classroom
Oh my, it's been a long while since my last post:) You know how crazy da teacher's life gets between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. I was barely managing to keep my classes in order, so as you can imagine, there was little to no time to blog or create anything new for my TPT store.
Well, if I am being honest, I still don't have much energy. But it is New Year's Eve, and I thought today would be a great day to launch my new blogging series titled "reality check" because let's face it, as teachers, we need to step back and truthfully evaluate what's working and what’s not. So here it goes...
Five Things I've abandoned/amended in my classroom this school year:
My TpTing - I have seriously enjoyed TPTing this school year, especially in making my Inside Out resources. However, I will be the first to admit that I was becoming completely consumed with my store. After work, I would come home and spend hours creating stuff for TPT. Like 4-5 hours a day (including Saturday night/Sunday). Yeah, it was unhealthy, I know! So starting next week, I am creating a TPT/blog schedule to limit my out-of-school work so I can actually enjoy my time off.
My class job framework - Initially, my idea was to have four or five students doing different jobs...well, as you can imagine (and as any veteran teacher could have told me), this didn't fly. Trying to remind multiple students, let alone one, about their job was too chaotic and not helpful. So now I only have one helper, and they stay the helper for the entire week.
My approach to teaching health - This year, we have completely revamped our health and wellness curriculum. The focus is to teach students about the interconnected nature of health and the necessity of empowering each element of well-being. The longer the year goes on, the more I realize that my students are most engaged when I present an interactive lesson focused on allowing students to take ownership of their learning! So I've said goodbye (well, at least I try to minimize) the standard lecture style of teaching.
A monthly health newsletter - For the few months of school, I was regularly sending out a health and P.E. newsletter. The goal was to inform parents about the character trait of the month, upcoming topics, and the students of the month. Well, after three months of getting zero response from co-workers and/or parents, I decided it was time to let this task go. Now, the time I used to spend working on the newsletter will be spent creating useful posters/activities for my classroom.
Running my school's IG + Twiter accounts - This summer, I was incredibly ambitious and started some social media accounts for my school. Well, fast-forward five months and I haven't touched either account...a single time. It's not because I don't value social media, actually I think our school really needs it. But I don't have anything extra time to give, so I'll let someone else pick up the slack on this one.
As I sit and reflect, by no means do I consider myself a failure because I recognize the reality of needing to abandon and amend some projects and ideas. Actually, I feel very liberated by the process of allowing myself to let go and change things up in my classroom. And I encourage you to do the same!
I'd love to hear about the things you have dropped and/or modified in your classroom???