Warning: Teacher talk ahead...

So, ya'll know I'm a teacher.

This is my NINTH year in the classroom.  NINE YEARS.  I would be a freshman in high school if my first year had been first grade.  Ho. Li. Shit.

Anyway, in nine years of teaching I have learned that talking about teaching is boring.  It's a fact.  People want to hear two funny stories about how dumb/funny/crazy/ your kids are and then, they are bored.

They don't want to hear how many schools don't have working water fountains, or how many kids carry blades to school in their gums 'cause their scared, and they don't want to hear you complain that you don't have paper to print attendance sheets on.

Bo.Ring.

I get it.  I'm bored with it too.

Now, what I LOVE to talk about is even more boring than the blades, water fountain, paper thing.

Instruction.  Oh, instruction, I could talk about you all day...if only someone else wanted to talk about you too.

How DO you get kids to understand the meaning behind the syntactical structures at play in the opening of The Bluest Eye? How do you convince some 10th graders to look past the slow moving first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird to get to the juicy story? How do you sear the rules of semi colon usage into the brains of fifteen year olds who are literally so full of energy they can't get in or out of their seats without knocking it over?

Magic.

I am rolling out something brand new this year.  It was a scary change.  All my old lessons-out the window.  My classroom crutches, pulled out from under me.  But, today, it paid off.

Project based learning is the newest trend in education-I went to a training on it over the summer and was completely overwhelmed. I realized that if I was going to implement it in  a real way, I would have to change entirely my way of teaching.  I wasn't sure I could do it.

So what is it?  Project based learning functions around the idea that students don't need to be taught, they need experience.  So, rather than do traditional lessons covering the skills/content that needs to be covered by a certain date, teachers create a large, AUTHENTIC project, the completion of which would expose them to all the skills and content required AND force them to master those skills and content in order to complete the project.


Kids come into my classroom, sit down at a computer, read through their agenda, confer with their collaborative team (with whom they've created a professionalism contract), and get to work.  I have created an online classroom with resources, rubrics, assignments, their grade book, and a communication system in place to support them.  They submit all their work online.  They share all work with their team via google docs...

Today, my work was observed by not only my direct supervisors, but by network leaders.  They stayed in my 90 minute class for 60 minutes and watched as I did not teach.  My students were 100% engaged for 100% of the time.  At one point, an observer asked, "Do they know you're here?"  I said, probably not.  They weren't working because a teacher was hanging over them.  They were working because the work was authentic and meaningful.

The discussions that arose were deep, thoughtful, and productive.  The work they accomplished was exemplary.
At no point did I address the whole class.

I have never seen my supervisor smile so much.

In a debrief after the class, my students told the observers, "Ms. Camille has taught us about real responsibility.  We RUN to her class."

I almost cried.

Today was a very good day.