Proven techniques to conquer challenging times of the school year.
One thing that is true about every school year is that the time right before major breaks is always kinda like living a real life Jumanji. You're exhausted. Your kids are exhausted. The weather is chaotic or swiftly changing. There seems to be a never ending list of things to do. And something totally unexpected always pops up right as you feel like you might actually drown in expectations. It's easy for you and your students to go crazy. Here are the two biggest mistakes I have ever made around major breaks and how I stopped being my own worst enemy.
Step off the gas.
My first year for a few weeks in May I started trying to coast to the end of the year. We were doing activities in class, but I wasn't grading them. There was also no incentive for students to keep doing work, no major projects, no tests, no finals. So my kids lost their minds, and I was like, "why did my sweet angels I worked hard on getting into good habits turn into monsters?" And it was because I was acting like the learning didn't matter any more, so they stopped caring and trying.
How I fixed it
So I learned it is important to not coast to the end of the year but to turn on cruise control. If I wanted the students to keep learning and trying I needed to keep teaching, and grading, and holding them to the same standards they were held to all year long. If I didn't want to deal with classroom management issues, I needed to keep teaching and in order to that I needed to create solid routines and structures that worked all year long. So I started focusing on planning my units into weeks and having a routine structure that allowed for flexibility and expectations to co-exist peacefully This allowed my students to continue with the same routines all year and allowed for me to do most of my planning upfront so that the times when I was the most exhausted all the planning was already done!
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2. Fun without content is no fun at all.
Another thing I realized but this was my third year teaching right before winter break is that while learning can and should be fun, that the fun has to be combined with expectations. I learned this lesson early in the year. Before winter break I had students compete in a Mock Trial for a few days and then had two days after the trial where we watched a video that related to the trial we just did. And it was a disaster. There was no incentive for students to have contained or appropriate fun. The fun was wild fun. Which is actually not fun but chaos. They were running around, talking, throwing things, and acting in ways during the video they would have never acted in class a week before. I was flabbergasted.
How I fixed it
I realized that while it is important for students to have fun in school, only fun in tandem with a looming break or vacation is a recipe for students to lose their minds. So rather than just having fun activities right before I break I make sure that the activities still have clear expectations and are content based until the last day for the end of the school year with some fun added in!
For example: Students had a party on the last day of school, but it was a medieval dinner party! They had to either come in a costume they made, or draw a life-sized version of their medieval or renaissance person they had researched all week and wrote about. Their ticket in the door to the party was their written answer to an open-ended question. And they had to bring something to the party that was authentic! At the party they had a fishbowl with questions to ask each other about their lives or tasks to complete. This way students were having fun, but also learning right up to the last minute of the school year!
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Moral of the story is you reap what you sow, so plant good lessons and learning activities for challenging times of the year!
