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My mission as a teacher is to teach the child. The subject that I teach is secondary to the skills and growth we work to create, develop, or advance. So much of what we do in the classroom is designed to prepare students for their future endeavors in education and life. If they learn some history along the way awesome. If they learn to be a better person, that's the mission.
To say that strange, weird, funny, and crazy things happen in this classroom is an understatement. I am constantly seeking to engage students in unconventional methods. These methods are based in the ideas of gamification and other practices that increase student success. The key to these methods are the subtle tricks which massively increase student engagement, achievement, and learning. My hope is for your students to consistently come home from school and have to tell you the fun, the crazy, or strange thing we did in class. If they're talking about it, they're remembering it.
Humor is going to be a part of my class. I firmly believe that if I am having fun in this class then my students will have fun as well. Sometimes I'm hilarious, other times it's incredibly cringeworthy. Any way you look at it though, it helps create an environment that supports students because they feel like they can be themselves. This helps me stay away from the optometrist because my pupils are rarely out of control.
Projects are going to be a constant part of our journey together this year. Projects allow students to explore parts of history that they are passionate about or they are interested in. Projects are more functional than tests as well. A test simply gauges your ability to regurgitate information. A project not only asks you to access that information but to then synthesize it into something new. It asks you to internalize the knowledge and use it to create something. I know many of you think that a project is nothing more than a set of instructions designed to lead you to a specific outcome. That is not a project, that is a recipe. A good project, much like a good road trip, has no real path in mind. It has a destination and a timeframe, but no set path on how to get there, or even what where is.
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