Part 2: Semester At "C"

In the first installment of "Semester At "C", I lamented about some of my frustrations with the past semester be it with providing feedback for what felt like an avalanche of formative assignments, pushing students to strive for more then the minimum, or teaching an overload schedule.  This time I want to focus on what I saw as positives last semester:

1. Engagement - In revamping the the curriculum for Humanities (English/Social Studies, co-taught), we found that overall many students were on task more often with the learning that was put into the hands.  The classroom is now active, no longer are students passively taking in some of the information, rather they are in control and able to work with one another is small group settings that hopefully will give them ownership for the learning and skill development.  One challenge of this though is getting students to break out of their small comfortable peer groups to work with others who may push them as students.
2. Communication - Making the classroom learning increasingly student-driven has allowed us to have more meaningful conversations with small groups of students each day in class, versus having a dialogue during a direct lecture time period with the other fifty students staring off into space.  This environment has allowed us to connect with those students who would be staring off into space and put responsibility on them for their learning.  Talking with each student at least once a day, though it might not seem like much in a fifty student plus environment it can be easy for students to "hide or blend in".  Small group learning has been an added benefit, instead of whole class lectures, we are working (and improving) on small group "lectures".  The only drawback is repeating it upwards of six times in one day!
3. Collaborators - Having a handful of colleagues that are attempting similar styles within their classrooms and having a chance to discuss the ups and downs has been important.  Being able to expand our class content by incorporating information from other content areas such as science is appreciated.  Connecting content areas together and having students begin to see the relationships between them and how one class can serve another is only in its infancy, but having others willing to work has been rewarding.

Though this post is "Semester at "C"", I can look back and say that it wasn't necessarily an "average" semester.  The work that has been done initially has been tough, time consuming, and definitely not average (from my perspective).  As Winter Break draws to a close, I am feeling refreshed about getting back into the classroom and continuing to refine what has been started this year.