The Incredible Journey
by Robin Daye, Hanford Dole Elementary, Salisbury, NC
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| Mrs. Daye creates the perfect balance of high expectations and personal relationships with her students! |
What is it they say about the journey of a thousand miles beginning with one step?
Perhaps the journey of a thousand thoughts begins the same. I want to share with you
the incredibly journey, the transformation, in my classroom this year using a combination
of Blended Learning, station rotations, and an administration who allowed me (us) to
personalize our teaching much like they want us to personalize the learning for our
students.
When I first heard about Blended Learning, that’s what it felt like…another
thousand miles into yet another education buzz topic. Honestly, my first thought was
maybe if I just hold on, it will go away. I was going to take a page out of my dog, Abbie’s
book; if I don’t look, it’s not there. However, as it so often happens, change is not easy,
but sometimes it’s necessary. Let’s take a look back to September.
At the beginning of the year, the new buzz word for the district was Blended
Learning. Our school had a committee. They had a manual. They wrote a new
manual. Blah, blah, blah. We’ve all been there. What’s the new thing this year? (Insert
eye roll here.) Suddenly, it seemed my school was actually serious about this plan. We
had a schedule for reading and math and rotations were expected. “Ok, I thought. I’m
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| Mrs. Daye's station rotations are personalized and student-centered. |
smart. I’m resourceful. I can do this.” At the end of week one: “What was I thinking?
I’m dying here.” Then, a little bit of hope surfaced. Our admin knew we would struggle
in the beginning and trusted us to try and fail. Yes, I said “trusted us to fail.”
It seemed they had done the research and hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be
in the classrooms. They trusted us to try, just try, each little step, and trusted us to step
out and be courageous. That was the key, in my opinion, to making this journey of a
thousand miles really work. It was ok to fail, ok to experiment, ok to start over. In other
words, it was going to be ok. Someone had our backs.
In the next few weeks, we took those first steps. We taught the rotations. We
taught the processes for each station. We modeled the transitions. And modeled. And
modeled. And modeled. It was a journey for our students, too, and one they were
beginning to enjoy. I began hearing, “Are we doing stations today?” “Can we do
stations in math?” “Let’s try stations in science, Mrs. Daye.” When any student is
excited about what they are accomplishing for the day, that’s a win! Some of you may
ask, “How did you sacrifice the teaching time for all these new processes?” Honestly, I
don’t know. We are, however, ahead of our schedule for the first time in the nine years
I’ve been in elementary school, so the sacrifice must have been worth it.
It was also a journey for planning each day. Sometimes, I threw out an entire
week’s worth of lesson planning because I learned something that day with my students
that inspired something else. Our admin knew this, too. They assured us that our plans
would not be written in stone, and that it was a process. They knew there would be
changes. We began planning in generalities and standards and implementing in
specific lessons daily. We learned that personalized learning wouldn’t look the same
every day or in every classroom. We learned to use today’s data for tomorrow’s
lessons. We learned to set goals for individuals, groups, classes and grade levels. We
learned that for the first time in a long time, our students came first. We had always
said it, and meant it, but now it was a reality on a daily basis in our lessons.
For me, however, this buzz word this year became personal. You see, I have 30
years of teaching experience both in public schools and in the private sector. I’ve seen
students at almost all levels of learning and achievement. This concept, however, has
changed so much of what I thought I knew about teaching and learning. It has
reenergized my love of the game, so to speak, and has made every day something new
and exciting.
One reason for this is behavior and classroom management. That might surprise
you when most teachers think that blended learning rotations would make managing
behavior more difficult. On the contrary, I think teaching my challenging group of
students whole group this year would have been a daily frustration. Not only did they
have challenging behaviors, but the wide range of abilities they brought into one
classroom was daunting until station rotations came into play. Quite simply, I
discovered they worked better in small groups more geared to their learning styles and
abilities whether they were at a teacher-led station or at an independent station. I’ll
have to admit, that was a huge surprise for me. I don’t think I really believed it until I did
a whole group lesson one day as a review and behavior was definitely my biggest
obstacle. Did we have bumps in the road for classroom management and expectations
in the beginning? Of course! Do we still have to model and reteach when expectations
are not met? Yes! We have, however, remained steadfast in our goal of high
expectations, and we continue to model and teach those expectations daily, throughout
the year.
Of course, I know there are still doubters among us. Let’s get real. No one
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| Mrs. Daye's students love coming to her class because they know they are going to learn something new every day! |
strategy, no matter how compelling, will be the end all, be all, for any classroom. I know,
however, as I sit here planning lessons for the last quarter of school, that I am more
relaxed, more confident, more empowered to plan better lessons and better teaching for
more ability levels. I know that although the testing is still out there, my students will
have the best shot of feeling prepared and confident for those days in May that give us
all a little trepidation. I also know that my year has been one of growth in my
professional philosophy and in my overall attitude in my profession. I felt great about
those bumps in the road because time and again, they became my phoenix for rising
out of the ashes to create a better classroom, being a better teacher and having a better
outlook for a profession I love.
Seriously, you can’t ask for more than that out of a year, right? So keep trying,
keep experimenting, begin this quarter if you haven’t already. Trust yourself to
transform your teaching, your own learning and that of your students. You’ll be ready
for that next thousand steps before you know it. RD
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