What if you printed out a blank vision document and posted them around the room? Students could take sticky notes and do a gallery walk annotating their ideas for goals they want for the course. You could share an example of a goal (with the WHY and HOW), and see what students come up with. It could make for an interesting classroom discussion!
Definitely! we for sure center the vision in those early weeks—and making it interactive would be a massive win
Secondary lens is tricky in terms of unifying, always, as there are six different sections that you then need to find some alignment/compromise across them for the classroom in terms of systems. (Also why I tend to have them annotate/give feedback at the end of the year to "pay their feedback forward" for future years.)
Ah! I always forget to take off my elementary lens when thinking about the community stuff you do with your students. Having six different course sections is a very real challenge for creating something unifying! You do an excellent job of building community with your students despite this challenge.
Thank you so much for posting this. I will be revising based on your share. I think we can be very passive consumers of models, even in the act of creativity (creating a syllabus), by relying on form. I never considered how the form itself could be a place of creative engagement/play (as a teacher). Also, thank you for the context at the end. I am VERY hard on myself when I reflect on what I can attend to now (vs. earlier teacher years). You are right: consistent schedule/course opens bandwidth for evolving one's work.
100% spot-on with the word "bandwidth"—so much of what we do comes down to that, which is also why creating and protecting bandwidth is important for educators across the board. Thanks for this positive note, too!
Great post! Have you ever tried having students annotate your syllabus or your vision document?
https://remikalir.com/annotatedsyllabus/
It could be a great way to collaboratively build a classroom community vision.
Love it! My only downside is that we typically have 1-2 weeks in our classroom without any Chromebook usage before they are checked out to students...
What if you printed out a blank vision document and posted them around the room? Students could take sticky notes and do a gallery walk annotating their ideas for goals they want for the course. You could share an example of a goal (with the WHY and HOW), and see what students come up with. It could make for an interesting classroom discussion!
Definitely! we for sure center the vision in those early weeks—and making it interactive would be a massive win
Secondary lens is tricky in terms of unifying, always, as there are six different sections that you then need to find some alignment/compromise across them for the classroom in terms of systems. (Also why I tend to have them annotate/give feedback at the end of the year to "pay their feedback forward" for future years.)
Ah! I always forget to take off my elementary lens when thinking about the community stuff you do with your students. Having six different course sections is a very real challenge for creating something unifying! You do an excellent job of building community with your students despite this challenge.
Thank you so much for posting this. I will be revising based on your share. I think we can be very passive consumers of models, even in the act of creativity (creating a syllabus), by relying on form. I never considered how the form itself could be a place of creative engagement/play (as a teacher). Also, thank you for the context at the end. I am VERY hard on myself when I reflect on what I can attend to now (vs. earlier teacher years). You are right: consistent schedule/course opens bandwidth for evolving one's work.
100% spot-on with the word "bandwidth"—so much of what we do comes down to that, which is also why creating and protecting bandwidth is important for educators across the board. Thanks for this positive note, too!