The End is Near! (5-13-08)

The end of the school year is a tricky time to be a teacher. You want the kids to continue to learn and your expectations are in some ways higher then ever. After spending a year setting the tone and making professionalism a top priority in your classroom it's hard to accept anything less. On the flip side you have the students who are ready to forget all about everything you've worked for all year...a professional, collaborative learning community.

The Power of 17 is unfortunately no different. Some students, Mahkena, Armando and a few others still demonstrate immature behaviors and difficulty with their impulse control. In some ways it seems as though some of our freshman have actually gotten less mature through out the year (something that I'm not particularly proud of). At the same time, some students are still struggling to engage in learning. Ron refused to work yesterday and Bonnie spent about an hour outside of class doing God knows what. Meanwhile, despite the unavoidable struggles, we continue to push forward as a class.

Beyond the classroom behavior and focus issues teachers face other dilemmas at the end of the year. With two weeks left should I continue to provide the students with new learning and new information or should I spend the time making sure that they really, deeply understand the big ideas that we've spent a year developing. Having taught for almost 5 full years now I tend to opt for the later of the two. Ensuring that kids really comprehend the essential learning from the year and that they're able to draw connections between what they've learned is more important to me than anything else. As a result, we're focusing on two major end of the year projects/tasks.

The first is a chance for the Power of 17 to analyze three major kinds of data that they've been dealing with all year...Linear, Exponential and Quadratic. Since these types of functions aren't going away from their math education anytime soon I believe it will do them a great service to solidify their thinking and make any possible concrete connections between the three types of data. Since this group of students are the only ones who have spent time with Quadratics it is important that they really see how they're related to the other two types of functions.

The second is an opportunity for kids to show what they know and how they grow. In other words, students will be asked to come up with an end of the year presentation that convinces me and their peers that they have retained some crucial information from this year's course. Moreover, they need to describe how they've grown as a person and as a student. It's my belief that students need opportunities to think about how they've changed and reflect on their own learning. Otherwise school becomes a go, go, go environment with no pauses to stop and really think..."what do I know, how have I changed."

I'll be sure to keep you posted as we work through these last weeks of school. On a side note, I need to give some props to Ladon, Benito and Torian. Ladon and Benito did a great job in the staff-student basketball game. I was really impressed with how they play the game in a professional way and how much hustle they bring to the court. They're also really skilled (much more than me although I will say that I was impressed by my 18 points in our 54-51 victory). Torian deserves props for his coaching of the student team in which he really did his best to help them stay in the game.