Wow. Two weeks went by fast.
Students are in the process of registering for classes for next year. Juniors are already done. Counselors are working with Sophomores right now. If I want to grow the computer science pathway at my site, I have to recruit.
Unlike last year, my principal gave me his blessing and even gave me $500 to help with the recruiting process. I reached out to a printing company for flyers on why taking AP classes are good for you, and a bunch of posters for computer science that I found from the code.org website. My principal also paid for a substitute for one day so I can visit Advanced 10th grade English classes and Algebra 2 and higher classes to do a presentation on the computer science pathway at Perris High.
This meant that every moment of my free time had to be spent scouring for information for my presentation. Students at my site often do not know what computer science is. Since the moment Computer Science was offered at my site three years ago, there were consistently only one section of AP Computer Science Principles and one section of Computer Science Discoveries. Some students have seen their friends go through pains to create animations that don't even look beautiful and other students have seen their friends write so many lines of codes to make a game that is not sophisticated nor exciting. Even the students in computer science classes do not really understand what they can do with the skills they have acquired or how computer science is used in the real world. Thanks to code.org and a few other sites geared for counselors, I was able to create a presentation that focused on the need of minority members and girls to take a piece of the pie in the computer science field. I was quite happy when girls approached me and asked about the courses. I may have mentioned this in my earlier blogs, but Perris High now has the opportunity to offer AP Computer Science A through Amazon and I just can't really think of a reason why students will not take advantage of this opportunity(my slides, in case you want to copy and modify). And yes, I bought 14 boxes of pizza from Pizza Hut on March 6th for students and parents who might be interested in learning more about the pathway. Unfortunately, I didn't advertise the pizza in fear that the whole school will show up only for a slice of pizza and not for the information. That was a huge mistake since even the students who were interested did not show up although they came looking for me later that day since it was back to school night. My coach Deatra proposed advertising the pizza next year if I get funds again. After all, the children might show up just for the pizza, then learn that they were actually interested in the field after all. My principal, Mr. Santos, suggested that I keep the parents and the students hostage til the end of the workshop, then offer the pizza (limit 1 slice per person) as they leave my room. Of course I will be applying both their advice for next year. My affection and respect for these two grow more and more each time I interact with them.
Now that has come and gone, it is time for me to confess. I have been lazy.
I cancelled station rotations on March 6. In case you didn't know, Wednesdays equals station rotations. Structure is important for students especially if they never found success in a math class. But I really didn't get to do anything that week except visit classrooms, put in rush orders for posters, order pizza and get presentations ready. I still had to teach all my classes, run GirlsWhoCode and stay after school for credit recovery. So I made an executive decision to direct teach the whole week in my #StartOver class. That week was devoted to studying for Thursday's test where students get to challenge first semester of Introduction to Algebra 1.
I have to say, there was absolutely no planning required on my part. Remember my little team of Introduction to Algebra 1 and Support class where all students are starting over? I'm the only one at my site so I have a team of teachers from 2 other sites at my district and we email each other. Joe is the one who mostly communicates. He sent out a practice worksheet. It was beautiful. It had the same questions on both sides of the column, different numbers. It was designed so I can solve one as a sample and the class can solve the one on the right looking at the model on the left. All of a sudden, I got insight into why teachers prefer direct instruction.
Planning for station rotations has gotten easier for me since I've been doing it for a while now. But you do have to think about which new concept you want to introduce, what kind of notes you want your students taking and what kind of problems you want your students to be solving in each of the stations. And the collaborative piece should be similar but still different every time. I would say that it takes me about an hour to plan and prepare the videos, notes and documents for station rotations. It used to take me longer, but I'm becoming more efficient. Even if I were to use direct instruction, I usually pre-write my notes so students know exactly what the format looks like. I have learned the hard way that if I simply start writing on my Interwrite pad, my students have no idea how to organize it. They have to see how it looks in an actual lined notebook that looks exactly like theirs.
Now that the recruiting week is over, I have to report to you that I'm back to more than half the class not doing work and explicitly going on social media or using their cell phones. I got flashbacks to those days years ago when I felt ineffective as a teacher and wanting to leave the classroom.
I thought about it. If I were a coach and all my energy was devoted to my sport, I probably might not have the time to invest in teaching strategies. If I teach a higher level math class and all my energy was devoted to helping students work through a difficult problem, I probably won't see a need to invest in teaching strategies. But for teachers like me who teach lower level math and is not a coach, I need to continue to grow.
So here I am, looking at my past two weeks and promising myself that I, Princess Choi, cannot be lazy.
And this is my last comment. How can we help coaches and teachers who teach dual enrollment classes, AP classes and other difficult courses be a better teacher?
There is no need to hurt anyone's ego. They are all good people. But it is a disservice to our students when we stop reinventing ourselves.
Have a great time, til the next blog!
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