Like the slacker I am, I didn't plan any of my field trips until the week before I needed to go. They were organized in a rush, with me running around the administration buildings begging for purchase orders to be signed mere minutes before the bus left. And now, I feel so guilty for having not taken them out earlier in the school year. Because even though all we did was go to the Denny's in North Gallup, it put my kids in their element. It showed them and me why the hell we're doing all this to begin with. (Because sometimes teachers have to be reminded to.)
This is what we worked toward all year. Assessments, standardized tests and unit exams are necessary evils. But when you get down to it, the real progress that I see among my students is in their confidence. John Cena can find the type of burger that he wants in the menu. My other seventh grader knows how to lay her napkin on her lap. They can all budget. They can all figure out how to calculate 15% tip by hand. They aren't (as) afraid of asking questions and paying in public. I should have done this long ago.
The content I teach my students is dictated by their individual education plans. Those plans instruct me to teach multi-digit multiplication, addition and subtraction. Those plans tell me to make sure they read at a second grade level by the end of the year. But slowly throughout the year, I read behind the lines. Because what those plans really are telling me is that my meaty eighth grader needs to learn how to multiply because he needs to learn how to calculate the tip for his meal. And John Cena needs to learn how to read at the second grade level, because he needs to learn how to figure out the what the heck is in a Creole Scrambler.
My instruction in the resource room is to help these students learn enough to be mainstreamed back into the general education classroom. But what I knew for a long time, but didn't fully apply, was that my job is also to mainstream these students into society. Apparently that means playing "restaurant word problems" once a week (I bring in my mom's fancy Chinese embroidered table cloth, plastic dish sets, fruit, cookies and napkins) and eating at the local Denny's restaurant. Watching my students mustering up everything they learned throughout the school year according to their IEPs and applying it at Denny's was among the proudest moments for me this year. I should have done this earlier. I should have done this more.
Don't be down on yourself. You are a first time teacher. Why do you think experienced teachers (usually) have their act together? Because they made all the mistakes already.
Experiential learning is great. It takes abstractions and puts them in the context of the real world. I can remember field trips and out-of-classrom experiences going back decades. It's hard to remember a single classroom lecture, because oftentimes there was no emotional hook on which to hang it.
Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Phil Nash | May 07, 2006 at 06:53 AM