And so it begins... again...

As I go through this journey, I’m having flashbacks to my days in college learning to teach over 20 years ago.  The types of learning, the approaches that we need to do instead of “teaching to the test” are exactly what I was learning about back then.  Inquiry, guided discovery, writing across the curriculum, constructivism, cooperative learning—this stuff is so old it’s new again. 

And I did use some of these methods when I started out teaching.  Still do occasionally (usually after the testing), so what happened?  Well, it turns out that lecturing is just a lot easier than any other method.  So it’s easy and natural to get lazy and fall into more and more lecture.  For me, with six preps, it was a matter of survival a lot of the time.  

Administrators like it when they walk into your classroom and see you lecturing and the students sitting quietly taking notes.  Never mind that 80% of those same students are completely checked out mentally—it looks good!  On the other hand, say an administrator were to walk into a classroom where 80% of the kids were engaged.  Maybe they would be working on their computers or using their smartphones to look up information.  I would get slammed for the 20% of the students who weren’t engaged.  But which is preferable?  In the end, where is more actual learning taking place?

So now I’m pulling out some of my old activities and trying to figure out how I can incorporate them again.  I’m also looking for authentic problems that I could have my students try to solve.  There are a lot of resources out there now that weren’t available 20 years ago.  Heck!  I don’t think the Internet was really that available 20 years ago (I think it was sort of around, just not all that useful yet).  I'm also searching for authentic projects I can use to inspire my students.  The salient question is whether or not I'll be able to conjure up enough resources to get 6 math classes through a whole year.