Background: I’m an instructional coach at a Title I elementary school. I love what I do! However, sometimes, I miss being in my own classroom. When the opportunity to work with the same group of kids every day presented itself, I jumped at it. The 5th-grade classes are large at our school. Many of the kids are struggling in math. To reduce the class size and give more individual attention to the kids, about 7-8 kids from each of the other classes formed our fourth class. For about an hour a day, I'm teaching those kids math. Most of the kids in my class are ELLs who often wear the “low” or “bubble kid” label. In truth, they don’t deserve to be labeled. They need a learning environment that will support their unique needs. (Topic for a different blog post.)
In the perfect world, I’d be teaching social studies (American History) or science instead of math, but I’m so excited that the content doesn’t matter. I know that being in “my own classroom” for a little over an hour a day will make me a better coach. Since 5th-grade math is mostly during everyone else’s lunch block, I’ll still have time to do what I usually do.
Anticipation. Every educator can relate to having those first-day jitters when school starts. It was no different for me except for the fact that it was the middle of November. Introductions, setting expectations, and teaching procedures were in the past for other students and teachers. But I had a new group of kids. I still had to do all of those beginning of the year tasks like making name tags, notebooks, etc. I still had to think through the procedures that I’d teach the kids. The actual physical space would not be my classroom. I had to think about how to be somewhat mobile. Planning and problem-solving heightened the anticipation of teaching every day. I was excited!
Tuesday morning, I made sure that I had everything ready for a fabulous math lesson. I had overplanned. Atypical of what teachers can usually do, I’d spent a good three hours (possibly more) preparing for one lesson. I recorded two parts for the flipped lesson, intentionally augmenting the lesson with vocabulary instruction. (The recordings weren’t perfect, but I had given up on making perfect recordings a long time ago.) I set up various accounts, printed off log in cards, and had class codes waiting. I checked and re-checked everything “techy” so that the lesson could flow, and I’d even double-checked to make sure that everything was accessible at school.
In addition to building a blended learning classroom environment, I had visions of children not only learning math but also learning language skills. I had a great picture book that tied in with the math concept, vocabulary cards, and plenty of visuals to help kids understand. I most likely wouldn't have time to read the story on day one, but it'd be available.
Furthermore, I wanted to track daily data in MasteryConnect. I made sure that I had a tracker set up and assessments ready to go. Formative assessments can also be the fun stuff, and so I created some games in Gimkit, Quizziz, and Quizalize. Kids were familiar with Kahoot, but I didn’t think that they’d be as familiar with these other classroom games.
Above all, I wanted to build stronger relationships with the kids. Luckily for me, I knew most of them. But, I still felt like it was essential to take time to build community. This group, after all, was a new class for them as well. I wanted them to know that I cared about them, their learning, and their progress. Building classroom culture and positive relationships are vital.
The bell rang and the kids came piling into the portable. After a few introductions and a tour of their new math class, we got ready to dig into the learning. I wanted to pre-assess their knowledge of fractions in a fun way by playing a game on Gimkit. Glitch Number 1: No Airplay, and even with hard wiring, I couldn’t get the projector and my computer to play nicely. My heart sank because it pretty much ruined the whole lesson that I’d worked so hard to prepare. There I was with twenty-two kids staring at me wondering if they'd like this math class with me as their teacher. I gave up on the projector and tried the next activity. But the next thing didn't work either! I could have cried but laughed instead. That got the kids laughing. We tried the next thing. Once again, it didn't work! I still don’t understand why, but everything “techy” failed. Kids had trouble logging in to one site. On another website, the interface looked different for some students. It caused some confusion for me as well as the kids. Students (and even adults) are patient with tech issues for a few minutes, but too much dead time invites misbehavior. I had to navigate between tolerating some of the tech “chaos," holding high expectations for behavior, and teaching kids how to troubleshoot.
Life and lessons go on. I always have Plan B, C, and D. Teachers become adept at thinking quickly on their feet. I had to keep the “lesson” moving forward. Luckily, I had my trusted mini-containers of Play-dough. A great go-to activity is to have students create something that represents them. Creating with Play-dough was not math, but it did give me time to walk around the classroom and talk with each of the kids about their interests. However, I failed to provide explicit guidelines. So when it came time to share, one student had morphed his Play-dough sculpture into a pile of poo to share with the class. Yes, he got attention and lots of giggles. Do you know the emoji that has the little avatar smacking her face? That’s how I felt. Sharing time ended up not being all rainbows and unicorns. Another girl shared something about her uncle and started to sob because he had recently passed away. After consoling her, another student shared about the death of his pet hamster. And so it went- with each student sharing a little bit about their life. The insights that I gained are invaluable. It wasn't math, but we did come to know each other a little bit better.
The "math lesson" was a complete failure! I forgot to write the objectives on the board. I’m even pretty sure that I forgot to mention them because I was too distracted by not being able to project my computer screen. There was plenty of talking but not the structured think on your own, share with a partner, share with a small group, discuss as a whole class format that so nicely scaffolds and engages learners. There were no DOK questions, no hands-on learning with math manipulatives, and there was no data to add to my tracker. Differentiation didn’t exist, and students didn’t collaborate or do any of the other C’s. There were no Hattie’s highly impactful strategies embedded in the day’s lesson. The super teacher cape was not tied around my neck and blowing in the wind. I’m a whole day behind and “somehow” I’ll have to catch up so that I can give the unit test on the same day as everyone else. This lesson failed, but it wasn’t from a lack of effort.
Despite all that went wrong, I left the classroom laughing! How could so many things go wrong for one lesson? Honestly, I wish that I’d had a video camera recording everything that happened! (But I’d add in confessional video snippets from the kids and me into the episode.) It’d be hilarious!
Sometimes, we get so wound up in all of the “gotta do's” that we forget that we’re human, that we all make mistakes, that tech doesn’t always work (even for the techiest of people), and that learning is a journey and that we should celebrate the joy of getting to work with or for kids every day.
It’s true that on the technical side of this lesson, it failed miserably. But, it wasn’t a complete failure, and I’m not a failure. I learned some things about my kids, and I learned some things about myself. It's so important to maintain a positive attitude and for kids (and other teachers) to see us fail once in a while. We share and see the highlight reel of ourselves and others. Maybe we should share and see the outtakes more often.
