Monday, September 8, 2014

Reflective Teaching: Day 8, Desk Drawer Readings Available Here!

Day 8--What’s in your desk drawer, and what can you infer from those contents?


My desk drawer is filled with the stuff of teachers: a drawer organizer filled with pencils, pens, stamps, stamp pads, ink, binder clips, tape of various styles, and punch cards for discounts on books, etc....

The biggest problem I have in inferring something from this hodge-podge of teacher detritus is that since I moved recently into my new classroom (mentioned in the Day 5 blog post), I'm still unpacking boxes.  I dumped one such box into my desk drawer.

I guess I could infer that I am unorganized, except that I'm not.  Even though the items were dumped willy-nilly into the drawer, they did come out of a box labeled "desk items" and all the pencils, pens, etc... do actually go together.

My desk drawer jumble actually implies that I am a teacher who doesn't mind a bit of organized chaos.  And that is true.  I don't mind a bit of chaos if the results are what I planned on happening.  I have a plan (labeled box and desk drawer organizer), but it's okay if the items have a bit of "freedom" in how they fit in the drawer.  

That's kind of like how I plan and teach.  I have a plan (learning objectives and standards), but I allow a little freedom in how we get to the results.  If that means that we take an extra day to understand something, my week's plan is flexible enough to withstand the disruption.  If that means that I have to go back over the material once my formative assessment shows that some of the kids did not get mastery of it, we can.

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