Something that has shifted in my class, in comparrison to other years is that students are engaged in something throughout the classperiod. I no longer feel frustration that students are interrupting my lesson fifteen times to ask to use the restroom. My role has shifted from performer to coach. I spend a few minutes at the beginning of each period giving kids a directive at the beginning of the period and doing some coaching, then the rest of my time has shifted to pulling students, collaborating with small groups, reteaching skills to individuals or small groups.
I am seeing is that students are genuinely helping and teaching one another, not giving eachother the answers to questions. They are sitting and explaining the steps to master the content to one another. That is super cool! I am seeing this at a variety of learning levels as well. It feels so amazing and so rewarding to see students interact with eachother in a positive way.
Another reward I am getting is that I am seeing even reluctant learners try. This doesn't mean that everyone is passing our classes. But they aren't sitting around constantly playing video games (they still try), but they are trying to learn the content. I am beginning to figure out that students with the reluctant learner profile that I have seen all of these years have a wall up when it comes to learning. Somewhere along the lines, they have come to believe that they can't learn. Some of them are struggling with things in their personal lives that prevent them from focusing on learning goals.
Moving to a more self-paced model of instruction is allowing me to sit with reluctant learners and build relationships with them. I can talk to them about why they are struggling and allow myself to be a safe place for them to open up abotu their frustrations rather than get constantly angry with them for disrupting the class. These interractions that I have had with these kiddos have been incredibly powerful in my growth as a professional, and I hope, in the lives in these reluctant learners as well.
It is no secret that the institution of public education has a TON of room to grow. We are an organization of humans. As such, there is a wide variety of skills and personalities to contend with. I am talking about from the educators.. A result of this is a lot of paperwork, meetings, getting pulled out of my preparation periods almost daily for helping students, assisting a colleague, completing paperwork, calling and working with parents, subbing for another teacher for a period. Since I am a special education teacher, my job requirement is to also test, write and hold IEPs which is a big time commitment. Writing an IEP alone is a two hour process. Holding the meeting can be another hour or two. Testing students and updating IEP goals, gathering data and working with my general education colleagues to try to figure out how each kid is doing in their individual classes can be an overwhelming task. All the while, I get push back from my colleages saying that THEY TOO are at their breaking points and the feedback that I get often, not always is that they don't have TIME.
All this to say, that I don't have TIME with ALL the elements of my job to create this model of instruction for my students. Its HARD. I am OVERWHELMED. Yet, I am going to persist, doing the best I can to continue with this model. I see that this teaching model has value and that it is impacting my students in a positive way. I hope that I am not feeling stretched so thin the next time I check in for a blog.
For now, what I have to report is, blended, self-paced instruction is hard AND it's worth it.