a little post from room 505 :)

This room is so silent I can hear the clock ticking.. and it is eery. Normally it is filled with freshman throwing paper at each other, or clicks from camera phones Snap Chatting their buddy, or just banter regarding another class or teacher. When they all come back in August, I'm sure it will take me about 2 days to get annoyed with them again and wish this silence was back.. so I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. :) So, as I sit here in my empty classroom grading AP Biology indepedent research papers, I can't help but reflect and have a little sappy teacher moment. This is the first time that I have taught AP Bio from start to finish (last year I left to have Jboo). And, this is the first time I have assigned a REAL experiment in my teaching career. I gave the kids very little parameters.. I told them it had to be something they could test, and it had to be done during classtime. They had to write a paper and do a presentation to the class about it. I borrowed the idea from the wonderful Internet because I do not want to reinvent the wheel. In this day and age of standardized testing, this was the first time some of them had ever had the freedom to THINK and DISCOVER on their own. As science teachers, it is very easy to make cookie cutter lessons that tell the kids exactly what to do. I didn't do that. I merely acted as a facilitator. So, during their presentations today, I could pin point many aspects of their experiments that were flawed or that they could have done differently to collect better data to support their hypotheses. But I also picked up on one giant AH HA moment.. all of these students acknowledged ERROR. They all sat back and reflected on their experiments and thought about how THEY could have done it differently. They all said, "well we SHOULD have done this..." or "..next time we would have done THIS instead.." and my heart as a teacher just swelled. I felt like The Grinch on Christmas morning. Because afterall, isn't that what we want our students to learn -- HOW TO THINK?! Sure, anyone can write a paper. Anyone can conduct an experiment. Anyone can read measurements. But it takes a lot more brain power to sit back and analyze your actions and evaluate how you had done things. For the first time, I was truly proud of my students. Yes, I told them all this, and I probably got too mushy but I needed them to know that out of everything, THAT is what I was hoping for from their projects.. and they excelled. Granted, these are my AP Bio students and they are all college bound, but still.. They have been taught in a world where all you need to know is how to pass a test. And I like to think that some of them were even proud of themselves. Maybe in 5 years they will be having a conversation and they'll say, "when I was in AP Biology, I tried to grow sea monkeys.." or "..hey, if you can't smell, you can't taste as well.. I did a whole experiment on it!" Wishful thinking, I know. :) Piggy backing on this, I have been wavering for a while now on whether or not I wanted to quit teaching and just stay home. All signs pointed to the fact that it would make me happier.. except for the money aspect. My department chair sat down with me and told me that she just wanted me to be happy in whatever I did, and if I needed permission to go, then she would give it.. but if I wanted to come back, she would fight for me to have a position. That meant the world to me to know I was valued. She also spoke of how her husband deals with his "identity" and how when people ask him what he does for a living he can't really give a true answer. She said that if I leave teaching, I might also be losing part of my identity. And she was right. I'm a teacher. I will always be a teacher in some form or fashion. So I sat down with Michael and I told him I wasn't ready to leave. It was as if 500 pounds of worry was just magically lifted from my spirits. The past 2 days I have been happier than I have been in a really long time, because I realized that this job IS important to me, and damnit, I'm pretty good at it. Year number 7.5 in the books. FANSLER, OUT!