[Note: This article is a follow-up on my previous query regarding whether or not Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity, is relevant to our work as teachers. I'm finished with the first part of the book, Do Fewer Things, and so far I'd say, “Yes — the book can inform and clarify how we teachers approach our work, provided we practice the flexible, solutions-oriented thinking.]
At the end of the school year, it’s easy to get hypnotized by the bright light at the end of the tunnel, forgetting that these final weeks may prove the most fertile of soils for professional growth and regeneration. Ending the year in the strength of insight and renewal — it seems too good to be true, especially when you’ve had a hard one. But I do find that it’s possible.
One thing that helps is zooming all the way out to the purpose of the classes you teach. What is the Everest of your courses (see Ch. 1 of These 6 Things) — the peak toward which they are meant to aid students in ascending? In my own history and English classes over the years, I think it’s come back, again and again, to something fundamental and good: My classes are meant to help my students grow into better thinkers, readers, writers, and speakers. These are the natural outcomes of doing things like writing essays, engaging in pop-up debates, analyzing sources, and building knowledge. The course material is important — I wouldn’t dream of reducing it — but it’s not the point. The point is what the point of all education is: becoming human, realizing who I am as an individual and who I am as a part of something much bigger than my individuality.
But how does such philosophizing help with ending the year strong? It restores my perspective; it right-sizes me. My work with students has immense weight in the grand scheme of things but is also very small in that grand scheme. Both are true, at the same time. And so, with my windshield clean again, I can see toward what my work in the classroom has been driving. Though we may not have ascended those distant peaks, they have grown larger as we’ve neared them. We’ve progressed.
From here, I can do something much more practical: what is one final project I’d like to undertake during my remaining time with students? Of that list of things my courses are about — better thinking, better reading, better writing, better speaking, better living — what could I do with my students that would help me become a more capable teacher and help them become more human creatures?
It may be:
- Conduct three more rounds of moments of genuine connection (MGCs; see Strategy 1 of The Will to Learn), focusing each round on a different prompt, such as:
- What’s one thing about each student I’ve appreciated this year?
- What are my students’ plans for the future?
- What’s one thing they’ve learned about themselves as a learner this year?
- Facilitate three more pop-up debates, with prompts like:
- “What’s the most important thing you can learn in school?”
- “What’s the most important concept we’ve learned this semester?” (doubles as a semester review)
- “What’s the best advice you could give to next year’s students?”
- “What’s the most important skill a student can work on to improve their public speaking?”
- Ask that all students create a one-page composition about how what they've learned in your class might be useful for their lives.
And so on. The point is you and me using our MISSION to create a simple, life-giving instructional PROJECT that we can complete between now and year's end. I'm not talking about adding a student project to the end of your year; I'm talking about you and me setting out to do something that reconnects us with the fundamentals of our teaching.
This way, we end the year with both a sense of accomplishment and a sense of returning to center.
That's a good way to end.
Best,
DSJR
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