2016-2017 Year in Review: Being New

Overview

This was my first year since 2010 being the new kid in school. Developing a reputation takes time, so I was deliberate about establishing who I am as a teacher from the beginning. I wrote about learning names at the beginning of the year, for example. My school, surpassing 1,000 students this year, is the second largest of those at which I have worked. The high school division is just over 320 students. There are many systems that are in place to manage the reality of this group of ninth through twelfth graders that has a tremendous diversity of interests, programs (IB and AP), extra-curricular organizations, and obligations outside of the school walls. I walked in admittedly intimidated by the scope of this place and what it aims to accomplish.

After one of our meetings before student orientation, there was a lot of information that had been shared. I asked our high school principal what the priority needed to be in the first quarter in terms of processing all of that information. He put me at ease – the focus should be on figuring out how this place works. He promised (and certainly delivered) on a pledge to remind us of what was important throughout the year, but with the understanding that there would be a learning curve for our group of newbies. The faculty is passionate about teaching and creative in how they go about designing classroom experiences. They were intensely committed to sharing what they do and helping those of us that were new how to prioritize at any given time.

What worked:

• The beginning of school was was a mix of content and getting to know them/me activities that were deliberately designed for those purposes. This sort of thing is important at the beginning of any year if the composition of a class is new. It’s essential if the teacher is new too. Each group is unique and has chemistry that not only is important to suss out in the beginning, but must be regularly assessed as the year proceeds. I thought this series of activities worked really well. I will modify these for the purpose of offering variety for next year’s student groups, but not really improvement.
• I was able to get most of my work preparing lessons at school during my prep periods. Exceptions were after exams, the end of the year, and near reporting deadlines. This required serious levels of prioritization and disciplined decisions around what I actually could accomplish in those blocks of time. While I maintained to-do lists, a major component of my success came from block-scheduling those tasks and sticking to the schedule. This left time after school and at home to spend designing the explorations, experiments, and bigger picture puzzles that were nice, but not necessary.
• I streamlined many of the administrative procedures I had created in my previous schools. I rebuilt spreadsheets that had been unchanged for several years rather than hacking old ones to work. Part of this was required to address the fact that my class sizes were substantially larger, but I also decided it was time.
• As I had hoped to do, I spent much of the year watching. I did not want to come in and identify everything that this school did not have that I may have had a hand in organizing in past school years, and then add it myself. That is how I came to feel burnt out every time June came around. I was quite picky with what I involved myself in. I said no to things. When I was ready to design a VEX robotics sprint (more on that later) at the end of the year, however, this meant I had the energy and drive to do so.
• The level of support I have felt from administrators and colleagues this year has been incredible. Nothing makes you feel so effective as a team that has your back, and that is realistic about what should, what can, and what cannot be accomplished with a given set of resources.

What needs work:

• I did not get out and visit my colleagues anywhere nearly as frequently as I wanted. This is a seriously impressive group of teachers trying different things. Part of the problem was my commitment to trying to get things done during my prep periods, so I do take responsibility for that. It would not have been too devastating to that structure, however, if I also planned blocks of time when I would visit specific colleagues. I ate in the lunchroom with colleagues fairly regularly, and that was great for learning what everyone was doing. It was not enough. More of that next year.
• I originally planned on doing outreach with parents more regularly this year. They are incredibly trusting of what we as teachers design for students, and this was evident at parent teacher conference nights during both semesters. I want more than that though. I want them to understand my philosophy for why learning mathematics right now is important. I don’t think the parents understand standards based grading, and although the students made solid attempts to explain it during conferences, these conversations don’t happen nearly as frequently as they should. I need to think more about what that communication looks like, and why I feel it is important, because I don’t think I can fully articulate that here. I do know that there is a lost opportunity when it comes to parents really understanding what we do in the classroom on a regular basis.
• I now believe that the ease of establishing community and connections with others is inversely related to the ease of living in that place. I often tell the story of how it was easy to rally a group of colleagues in my early days of China to go find cheese, which was difficult to find. Many of my closest bonds were formed during those adventures of first world adversity. Here in District 7 of HCMC, there is no such difficulty. Life is really good and easy here. This means, however, that one must work a little bit harder to leave the comfortable bubble of life to find adventure and make new friends. This is especially the case for me as the father of a now toddling ball of energy. It takes effort and time to build those relationships. That’s definitely something that I need to work on deliberately planning more frequently next year.

Conclusion

The second year anywhere is always less scattered than the first. The next few weeks are all about figuring about how to use the time not spent learning the ropes.