Classroom Update: Danielle's Class

Year 2 in my student-directed classroom honestly started off pretty rocky. If you have been following us, you are very aware of my struggles. If you are new to following Becca and my teaching adventures here is a summary of how my year started off.

I had such grand intentions of making this year amazing and that all my self-paced plans were going to work out just perfectly. When this years started though I was hit by some serious distractions. My classes suffered from apathy and behavior issues and I didn't respond fast enough.  Going into my semester break I knew I needed to restructure and regroup, so I spent some time really thinking about what I need to do. I read a great book and got my head on straight. I knew going into my second semester I was going to need to make some changes. 

THE CHANGES:

1. A revamp of my classroom management policies and practices. I needed to look be more proactive in de-escalating issues and make sure discussions about behavior took place in a personal, private matter. I also needed to use my administration more. I always took pride that I was able to manage most behaviors in the classroom and didn't have to write referrals. This year though I was having more serious issues with behavior than I have had in the past and I recognized that I needed to take things to the next level if my interventions didn't work. I also realized that I needed to really work on my contacts with parents. I am still working on this. 
2. Add more variety to my student-directed learning process. I realized that while I love the self-paced learning model because of the freedom it allows me, I wasn't utilizing really to its full potential. It was a little stagnant in kids were more isolated than I wanted and many students were struggling with the same things and it took long for me to get to each student individually and work with them.  I also realized that I really wasn't differentiated my instruction in a way that really helped students. I need more variety in the ways that students did activities and the levels of activities that students did, but at the same time keep my expectations the same. 
   1. Added in more small group activities and whole group activities. I wanted students talking to each other more about what they were learning, so I added in at least one small group activity per unit checklist. I also added in whole group activities when I saw a need to cover something that all students were struggling with or as an enrichment activity to help connect concepts together for all my students. 
   2. I also finally made good use of pretests to see what my students needed to focus on. See more on that here.
3. Make more of an effort to connect with my students. I am relationship teacher. I believe that no matter what grade you teach, you should strive to build relationships with your students. This year I have struggled with that. I am honestly not sure why. I think part of it for me was that I have been involved in too many things outside the classroom. So I have made an effort to evaluate all of the things I am doing and making sure that my time is used well. Also I am just trying to connect with the students more. My favorite way to do that is have simple 1:1 conversations with them about their lives and tell them about my life. I am also a big fan of humor and joking around with students. Even more importantly I am trying to communicate with my students that I care about how they are doing as a person and as a student. 

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The Results

Overall my second semester has gone so much better! It has been a relief to see some improvements in all of the areas I set to work on. 

1. I have found that I am having less disruptions because I have been working extra hard on maintaining my procedures and working with administration when I have a student that does not respond to my interventions. This still has been a year where I have students that are apathetic and do not want to follow procedures, but I really trying to stay firm in my procedures. 
2. As far as content I really feel like things have improved. My overall weekly schedule is something like this:
   1. Mondays and Fridays at a minimum are what I call Checklist days where students work on their self-paced checklist. These items consists of textbook readings, notes, and practice activities. 
   2. Then sprinkled in the unit is at least one small group activity where the students work together to either practice a skill or do an enrichment activity.  
   3. The final piece of a unit is at least one whole group activity that is based around connecting the elements of the unit or hitting a focus piece that I want to make sure that everyone really understands. 
   4. This has been pretty successful for my classes. It allows me to ensure that the really big ideas of the unit and still allows students to move through the basic functions of the unit in the self-paced style. I still have the ability to work with individuals and differentiate as needed. 
3. When it comes to connecting to with the students, I have also done a better job of having conversations with them about themselves and trying to let know that I care about how they are doing. I will admit though that this group definitely doesn't make it easy and they suffer from the biggest case of apathy I have seen in a long time. Many of them just do not care about school and for many there some big things going on outside of school.  I will say that I am having a bigger success with behavior with those students on the whole because I am getting to know them as people. I am still struggling to get work out of them but they do not cause as many behavior disruptions. 

On the whole things have really improved and I think that my classroom has gotten stronger and the student-directed aspect of my class has gotten stronger as well. This will definitely go down as a year where I have questioned myself as a teacher the most and grown the most as a teacher.