How do I get better?

I'm frustrated. I want to be an amazing teacher. Who wouldn't want to be amazing? And my school has an AWESOME attitude - we ALWAYS want to improve. I mean, I feel I can speak for the science department in that regard. We care so much! We really, genuinely, want to do right by our kids. Well hell, more than that, we want to teach the SHIT out of those kids. We want a cadre of GENIUSES leaving our doors in four years.

Yet, I'm still stuck on the how bit. How do I become a better teacher? Obviously, experience is part of that. I can't tell you how much I've improved just by being in the classroom for two years before this year. Every year...big improvements. So yay! I've come a long way. But I'm looking for PERFECTION.

Which, don't get me wrong, I know that totally doesn't exist. I don't mean that it's not attainable, I mean it does not EXIST. There is no objective way to measure a teacher's skill. There are so many factors to that (knowledge of kiddos? retention? citizenship? intellectual skills? were they happy in your class? were you a positive influence on their life? are they college ready? did you inspire them to do science? I could go on...)

Similarly, there is no one RIGHT way to teach. Which is part of what makes this so hard. There are so many directions to go, so many aspects of the job to focus on, so many reforms you could adopt, etc. With so many goals, where do you even begin?

And when you have a goal, how do you get better at it? Can you really do one goal at a time? Will that be effective? How many goals should you have? You could observe teachers in your school. In my experience, it's not super feasible to visit teachers at OTHER schools but I imagine that the bigger your network, the more communication you do with teachers in your discipline (and others), the more you'll learn, the more great ideas you can steal. I've found SOME websites that have videos of teacher's teaching (https://www.teachingchannel.org/ and www.teachertube.com) or somethign like that. You can watch inspiring informative Ted talks on education. I've recently started following a lot of popular science teacher blogs (and really, any that I can find).

I guess the idea is you have to be willing to connect with other educators and try out their ideas, take risks, try new things. It's tough to find the time to do any of that. Especially when you waste your Friday night making a blog post that no one will ever read... It doesn't help that I come home from teaching SUPER EXHAUSTED a lot of the time.

But I've been in a phase the last week or two where I'm SUPER excited about learning about teaching and getting new ideas. So that's good! I do feel like a lot of it is just learning and thinking "Wow, that's so cool!" and pretty much NO implementation. Part of that is because a lot of stuff I looked at was on Standards Based Grading.

And since the district controls a lot of how I grade....as does my school...as does my course group...I feel like I can't try a lot of it out. For instance, our gradebook closes every six weeks. So it's not really feasible to  reassess kids all year long on our skills because I'd be submitting hundreds of hand written grade change forms. And I can't use conjunctive grading or anything like that because I'm expected to grade in the same way as my course group (and it'd be a huge pain in the butt with our current gradebook). And I can't reassess frequently because I'm already giving multiple quizzes a week PLUS the district tests just to keep up with the district's mandated schedule. (Which is mandatory.) I mean, with all these standards, who has time for remediation and reassessment in-class??

So blurgh.

But on the bright side, I am getting better every day with experience. I'm trying new things, little by little. I haven't had a class website since student teaching and I'm bringing that back. Also trying to start putting my notes on YouTube. And if nothing else, I aaaam learning! I'm finding resources! I'm confident it will pay off sooner or later. I tried using Google forms for my survey this year, so that's neat. I went and observed an AP Bio class today. I'm more ahead on my planning this year overall than I have been in the past! Basically, yaaaay!

Okay, let's end on a positive note :)
Gabay out