Preparing for Teaching...

Refocusing the Profession...

Now that my 2nd (summer) job is winding down, I begin shifting the attention back to the classroom. In mid-late July, I've always began the process of refining or refocusing my educational practices. For me, my preparation for the upcoming school year will be focused on efficiency and class culture. It wasn't as if last year was chalked full of acts of treason, but there was evidence of lower academic performance and ambivalent behaviors. One of the main reasons for this was the class room (case load) doubled in size. 

Adjusting from Trimester to Semester, allowed for more instructional days, but it also meant more students. In 2014 - 2015, in one trimester I worked with 62 freshman. The 2015-2016 school year, I worked with 138 freshman in one semester. This increase resulted in a decreased performance on course exams. 

Having a larger caseload in any profession requires a greater amount of vigilance and organization. Doctors who see more patients, mechanics with more cars, or waiters/waitresses that have more tables all need to refocus their attention and reach for more efficient strategies to better assist their purpose.

Tech platforms like, Google Classroom, Edmodo, and Canvas are fantastic for extending lessons and instruction beyond the traditional classroom. These platforms also provide opportunities students, teachers, and parents to monitor progress or lack there of. With these technologies, teachers can find themselves in a better position to serve greater volumes of students. 

Although these platforms increase availability and convenience, they don't guarantee positive or "healthy" results. Its true, students and basically everyone in the modern world are using the Internet more frequently and with greater ease. A great example of this is the restaurant industry. Customers are purchasing their meals via their smartphones and laptops more often than any other point in history. This phenomena is great for the restaurant side, but not always good for the consumer. A recent 2015 study looked at tens of thousands of orders over a multi-year period from a single pizza chain location and found that people spent more and got a higher calorie meal when ordered online (Tetreault, 2015).

Today, the modern instructor must act as a quality engineer that both engages students through authentic challenges and oversees the quality of performance. Simply having tech-based platform available for students to consume can potentially produce some unintended consequences. 

This school year, students will be making their own solutions, reading their own narratives, and designing their own thoughts, not simply clicking on the first idea that comes their way. Ordering the first item on the menu or cutting and pasting the first idea from the web often turns a student's brain into mush, which is not too appetizing for anyone.