Day 12: Moveable Walls

Day 12: How do you envision your teaching changing over the next five years?

In five years, my first class of 4th graders that I taught will be starting their junior years of college and my current 8th graders will have just finished high school and possibly just beginning their university experiences.

When that day rolls around, I would like myself to still be making an impact in student's lives. That may or may not be in the classroom setting, but I can't really imagine it otherwise.

Our classroom would be awesome, and our students would love going there, especially outside of class time. It will be designed that way, with students in mind, and I will have incorporated the physical space of the room into our learning. There will be flat screens displaying photo & video streams of student creations as well as information on our class' progress towards mastery of standards. There will be multiple study areas and locations in the room to support individual and collaborative learning, along with the fancy moveable wall from my friend's dream classroom.

Everything in our class would assessed through standards and rubrics and students will know exactly where they stand. I will no longer be giving out A's, B's or C's. We would tackle big problems and projects that incorporate a variety of content skills and knowledge so students have real-life applications of maths, reading and writing, instead of applying these things in isolation.

I know I want to improve all aspects of my teaching: connecting with students, planning great lessons, facilitating effective instruction for all, providing a place for students to grow. But above all else, I want to love my job even more than I did when I first taught those 4th graders back in 2008.