Teach Like You’re Retiring

I announced my retirement on the first day of school.  This was a decision I made over the summer.  When parents came to see me during Back-to-School-Night, I let them know that their children will be writing a lot more fiction this year, reading a lot of my favorite literature, and having fun in our class.  I said I could do all of these things because it was my last year, “and I can do whatever I want!”  They laughed.  I did too.  But now, with only two more months to go in the school year, I realize that this plan was far more than a funny line at Back-to-School-Night.  This plan should be the plan for every teacher, every year.

I am truly having fun with my students, but I am not shirking my responsibilities.  In fact, my students are writing more this year.  They are digging deeply into topics this year.  They are reading and really talking about what they read.  They are causing me to create activities on the fly, because we “need something.”

An example of this “needing something” happened about a week ago.  Spring Break was looming.  It was a Friday, in the last full week before the break.  My 6^th graders would have plugged along in A Tale Dark and Grimm, the book we were reading.  But I could feel their energy.  I could sense their need for something different.  I told my class to, “Hang on.  I have an idea.”  I have these students with me for two class periods—a block.  So, about ten minutes before our passing-period break, I began digging through a basket beneath my desk for “dragons.”  I put the word in quotation marks, because I only have one actual dragon.  I came up with that dragon, a lizard, a rhinoceros, a mouse, a zebra, a rat, and a small stuffed “Stewart Little.”

Then, I folded in half some flip-chart-sized Post-it Notes we had used for earlier research.  These would be used as backgrounds-scenery-sets.  I asked my students to break into groups.  Each group needed a “dragon” and a large, folded Post-it Note.  Anything else was up to them.  Then, I asked them to look back at the scene in A Tale Dark and Grimm where Hansel and Gretel explain how they plan to catch and kill the dragon.  I gave them 15 minutes to create their scenes.

Some groups set up a still image with impressive, detailed scenery.  Some groups made videos.  These were both terrifying and amazing.  The groups used all sorts of things from our classroom.  And there are some interesting items in our classroom.  The 15 minutes stretched into about 25 minutes.  No-one left the room for the usual three-minute break.  Groups worked in the classroom.  Groups worked in the hall.  Once finished, we viewed all of the creations, and they were fabulous!  We laughed.  We felt surprise, shock, and did a few “jump-scare” jumps.

This was just what my students and I needed.  Will there be grades?  No.  I never grade group work.  Will there be talk about this activity?  Yes.  There already is.  Some members of another class, also reading A Tale Dark and Grimm, asked what we did.  I explained the activity to their teacher.  I hope she will break away from her plans to do this.  It was well worth it.  The problem is, I have no written directions to share.  I was shooting from the hip.

So, what is my point?  My point is…teach like you are retiring.  Don’t worry that you may ruin your schedule.  Don’t worry about the number of formatives or summatives you have in the grade book.  Seize the moment to do what is right and good for kids…and you.  Your students will remember more if they see and touch and manipulate things.  They remember more if they laugh.  You will enjoy your day more if you laugh.  And not everything needs to be a graded formative assessment or a graded summative assessment.  This impromptu activity gave me a lot of information, but without grades.  And my money is on my students remembering it more than a fill-in-the blank or forced-choice summative.

There are more examples of this shoot-from-the-hip-style teaching that my students have experienced this year (and other years, when I come to think of it).  There was the day I decided not to give the next list of vocabulary words to my class because we had already “met them” in the book were reading.  There was the time a few of my eighth graders asked if we would be writing a science fiction story after our unit of Ray Bradbury writings.  So, we did.  There was the time we had a Socratic Seminar with absolutely no preparation, and it was better than any prepared-for Socratic Seminars I have had before.  There will be the time, coming after Spring Break, when my seventh graders will write another piece of fiction, because they asked to.  There are more examples of these things.  Perhaps they can be better explained in another post.  Stay tuned.

Until then, read your students.  Read yourself.  Make decisions based upon what you need, rather than what is in the plan book.  Teach like you’re retiring.