Figuring it All Out

August 2021

As I embark on on my 26th year in education, I am reflecting on both my own growth as a teacher and what our kids need to succeed.

When I was about 7 or 8 years in, I thought I pretty much knew it all, or at least a lot of what worked. I was in my tight little bubble of a middle school in the San Fernando Valley. I had taught both Honors and core curriculum courses, and students from various socioeconomic backgrounds with some solid success. I was liked and respected by my colleagues and the majority of my students. Two years later, I would head to a different school, where frustration would be part of my daily struggle. A different school site, with extreme district mandates, and students with challenging home lives made for a difficult teaching experience. I did not know it all. Not in this setting.

Five years later I was in a virtual school setting, with with new platforms, tech tools and systems that were foreign to me. It was stressful. It was overwhelming. But looking back, these experiences were good for me. I had to grow. I had to learn new things. My old ways didn't always work with my new students. And that is a huge part of being an educator. As Jim Knight, an internationally renown instructional coach from the Kansas University of Research and Learning, indicates, "when teachers stop learning, so do students."

In setting our classrooms up for the year, I think about what our kids need to be successful in the 21st century. We want our kids to be prepared for life and its challenges, but with the world moving so fast, what does that even mean? 21st Century skills can actually be listed as a group of words that begin with the letter “C,"

Communication Creativity Critical Thinking Collaboration

So how do we embrace these needs and set our students up for success? Classroom culture is pretty key to academic and social emotional growth. Research shows that setting expectations, routines, and ways of being early on and reinforcing that culture can have a huge impact on student learning. You can find many ideas here. You can also check out this article to explore how to integrate the 4 C's into your classroom.

Our kids also need to be able to read texts and disseminate fact from fiction, bias from objectivity, so that they can be the critical thinkers. You can get some ideas on how to use informational texts here.

If you have your own suggestions for class culture or informational texts, please submit it here . New ideas are always welcome.

So we are off and running! Lots to do and lots to think about. If you need me, I'll be here. :)

~Toni