Time for CHANGE

CHANGE IS HARD! THE YEAR in REVEIW 

This year was chalk full of challenges and change. First and foremost I taught a new class 7^th grade Life Science. Your thinking… what’s the problem their seventh graders right? Wrong. I agreed to this in advance of course.  I knew about it and I thought I prepared. I read the standards. I mapped the textbook and correlated the chapters we would cover for the standards. I planned some great hands-on activities and bought each student a notebook to keep in the classroom for note-taking. 

But in reality, it is very challenging to teach a new class and a new grade level. What’s worse is that the class was not really a “new” class, and not really “mine” at all. For years seventh grade had been taught by another teacher in our district. And it turns out there were many expectations that really got me down. I was expected to do a bug project. I was expected to do month long units on both the metric system and winter survival. I was expected to teach and collect two month’s worth of sap from area maple trees. This information was not discussed and there was very little mentoring or planning in advance. 

There were however a lot of hard feelings throughout the year. This complete lack of communication really slowed me down, played with my psyche, and my squashed my creativity as a science teacher. I continuously felt like I was wrong and behind. What’s worse is that I did not stand up for myself. I did not stand up for my students, the academic standards, good team-work, positive change or growth. I let someone else and someone else’s opinion(s) into my work. What I learned is that I need to continue to work on my confidence, my communication skills, and my planning. Seventh graders need time to process labs and do things repeatedly for understanding. I will have a chance next year to remedy some of the mistakes I made and I will try my best. But also, I will do what is right by me and by my style of teaching for my students.