Year’s Best Unit and Reflection
2010-11 Teaching Portfolio Entry #3
If I’m going to judge a unit by how well it accomplished its goals, I have to go with our third unit on Golden Ages, which was basically a unit aimed at “covering” a lot of content in a little amount of time. This unit revolutionized how I will think about “coverage” in the future, and proved to be even more successful than we hoped. While it makes me a little sad that the best work I did in my Global class this year was the one where we made the largest sacrifice to coverage and content, it is also the one that might be most useful to people in a similar teaching situation.
The full unit plan and reflection can be found here.
What I Wish I Had Known at the Beginning of the Year
2010-11 Teaching Portfolio Entry #2
I wish I had known at the beginning of the year that, as a school leader, there is no “off” button. I’m proud of the job I have done this year as Social Studies Department Chair, as UFT Chapter Leader, and as an instructional coach. I am relatively confident that the members of my department and of my chapter that I interact with while wearing those hats have a view of me that jives with the view I want to have of myself. But in the past months, I have realized that the view I want to have of myself does not match up with the one many of my fellow leaders, whom I have known the longest, have of me. To them, I am often bitter, curmudgeonly, and overly negative. And that is a totally fair and accurate portrayal of who I have been around them. With the vast majority of the people who were at the school when I started now gone, I felt that there was a select group around whom I didn’t need to “watch what I say.” I treated my time with them much as teachers often do when they enter the teacher’s lounge: as a time to vent and get stuff off your chest. This, coupled with my innate tendency to focus on where things can be improved as opposed to focusing on where they are already good, made for the majority of my interactions with them being negative.
I have never seen myself as an excessively negative person (excessively critical, though, of course). I am not negative with my students, where I have been often (wrongly) accused of being too friendly with them. I am not negative, by conscious effort, in my writing or interaction with teachers virtually or physically outside of school. But I have been extremely negative in department chair meetings and in other similar groupings. At times this has hurt the morale of others, other times it has caused people to hold their tongues, and at worst, it has led to a defeatist attitude in some meetings. This is never the person I wanted to be. I wish I had known that there was no time to let my guard down. Just as I censor myself when I’m with students who when working with a struggling teacher, I’ve realized I need to do this at all times professionally, as it’s not fair to those who have wanted nothing more than to work with me in helping to address the many problems our students face.
Top Memories from My Time at Bronx Lab
2010-11 Teaching Portfolio Entry #1
Top Ten Thirteen Memories from My Time at Bronx Lab
13) Far too many drinks with colleagues at the late Four G’s
12) Seeing Tyree, BLS Class of ’09, give our students an information session at Sarah Lawrence College.
11) The many moments this year when my students truly demonstrated that they understood just how messy history is.
10) The look on Frank’s face, who I mentored this year, when was waiting outside my classroom door to tell me that Mubarak had resigned while he had the feed up live in his class.
9) My very first day as a paid employee at the school, where the class I was subbing for claimed they were organizing a walk out in protest of a teacher who was leaving. I was certain they were messing with me, and forced them to continue the lesson. Turned out, they were serious.
8) Watching my wonderful advisory grow over the four years we had together at school, and to be able to continue to do so in the year since they graduated.
7) The final meeting of my senior philosophy class this year, both mine and their last class at Bronx Lab, where we had a deep, hour long conversation using everything we learned that year around the question, “Why do you listen to me?”
6) When, on my first college trip with the students, I spent breakfast discussing with Ronnie the results from the previous night’s Super Tuesday primary election, and had a senior citizen come up to us after and tell us how nice it was to see two young men intelligently discussing politics.
5) Having my advisory throw me a surprise birthday party during their junior year.
4) Taking fifty students up to New Hampshire the day before the 2008 primary where, in one day, we saw Huckabee, McCain, Obama, and Clinton; the look in Rasheed’s eye as he saw Obama speak, and in Rhashan’s after he shook his hand.
3) The four hour drive with Stephanie and her mom to New York State History Day, where I failed to convince her that The Great Gatsby was not the worst book ever written.
2) Having the honor of being selected by the Class of 2009 as their graduation speaker, after teaching all of them for two years, and many of them for three.
1) The August graduation ceremony Michael and I planned, still the only time I’ve cried in my adult life.
The Little Things That Make It All Worthwhile
An old student of mine left this on my Facebook page yesterday:
“Remember that junior in high school who wrote a paper about the Seneca Falls Convention for History Day? Well, she is now a sophomore in college, and is actually going to that same place she wrote a paper on in 2008. YUP! Tomorrow I will be at the place where women suffrage began =) (I hope I don’t cry)”
Update:
She added this after going:
It was AMAZING. Being where it all started it, having stuff I learned be present in front of me, was just mind blowing. I loved every single minute of it. Just being a women and being able to stand in that chapel where it all began in 1848 made me feel powerful.
Goals for the 2010-11 School Year
Following directly on the heels of my last post, here are my goals for the upcoming school year:
Teaching
Along with my planning team, I will write an 11th grade Global History curriculum, that Humanities department chairs and school administrators agree is a model for how Humanities classes should be taught at Bronx Lab because they will support students in producing excellent authentic, project-based assessment work that serve as formative assessments towards high Regents achievement and college-readiness.
Each of the six Global History projects done this year will meet at least 8 of the 9 criteria for Project Based Learning from the Buck Institute for Education.
Students will experience at least one historical simulation, participate in at least one Socratic Seminar, and write at least one essay in each unit.
Leadership
By the end of the year, every social studies course will have at least four revised, authentic, project-based assessment that has received constructive criticism from other members of the Social Studies Department. These projects will assess students on at least 75% of the OAH National History Standards that the department agreed to use last year.
Advisory
100% of my new advisees will either graduate or earn at least ten credits by June.
Personal / Professional Development
At least once per week, I will write and publish a reflective piece of writing to assess in my professional practice things that worked well, things that need to improve, and/or ideas for the future.
Every two months, I will write and publish a self-evaluation of how I am doing on these goals.
2009-10 Teaching Portfolio
Along with two other teachers at my school, and inspired by a similar program at the Manhattan Village Academy, I put together a teacher portfolio this year to help my own personal development, consisting of the following sections:
- Inquiry Question: How can I support my students in developing their research skills? Analysis & Reflection, Assignments, & Student Work
- Supporting Journal Article and Analysis
- Best Lesson and Reflection
- Advice for someone teaching this course next year
- Top 11 Memories of the 2009-10 School Year
- Reflection on Goals for the Year
- Goals for the 2010-11 School Year
- Lesson from the Portfolio Process
