Growing Pains

Week three into the school year has brought cooler weather and... walls! It's amazing what you take for granted when everything is "normal."

(Without walls all the way up, I was speaking louder than I normally do, and I'm pretty loud and rambunctious!) 

Anyway, my next-door neighbor and I no longer have to talk over one another in our instruction -- a sound barrier (read: finished wall) has been installed! Don't get me wrong -- I bet that open-concept classrooms could work as intended if you had multiple teachers, grade levels, and professional development geared toward that model...but that's not what we're dealing with at Pikesville High School. 

(Walls - yay!! Also, some cool shifts of PPFs on the board). 

Now onto instruction. I've learned a lot about history through sports in these first three weeks, and I thought I would dread the class because of all the extra work going into learning new content and structuring an 80-minute lesson around it. Well, the kids are pumped about learning and sharing opinions about their views on political, social, and economic history through a medium that is comfortable for them: sports.  So far, we've covered most of a unit on Olympics and History, including the history surrounding Berlin, Mexico City, Munich, and Lake Placid.  Well, one of my colleagues approached me on Wednesday to ask if we could do a joint observation lesson with my "sports" class, and I'm all for it. In fact, three of us will be merging physical education, business education, and history into an 80-minute observation lesson with my kids -- talk about transdisciplinary planning, implementation, and learning!  Since we're in the early stages of brainstorming, I don't have many more details than that, but I am inspired to blog about it and document it so that other teachers might see the value in transdisciplnary approaches to instruction. I'm also very fortunate that I have an administration that is supportive of this approach and encouraging us to take on this challenge. 

So, look for more on that in a couple of weeks!  Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

The New School Year

I survived the first week! To be honest, I was not ready. With the construction, moving, and non-instructional meetings, I had almost 0 time to prepare lessons. Thank goodness I spent some of my time this summer getting my EPI (Economics & Public Issues) course mapped out and planned. 

I am really excited about my students -- they got me through this week -- and I'm really hoping to get a lot of learning and joy out of a new course -- History through Sports. I'll be spending a lot of outside time learning myself -- I don't know much about the topics I'm teaching in this course, which makes me nervous. 😳

We started with the Ancient Olympics, and we went outside to our track stadium (I'm a track coach, so this helped me feel comfortable from the get-go) to try to get a feel of ancient Olympia. Of course, it's not exactly the same thing, but having the students measure out the Stadion (the only event actually held in the first 13 Olympics), measuring out current world records for disc and long jump, and reciting poetry like the ancient games did actually get them learning! They were super pumped and excited, and I'm hoping to carry that through the semester. We regrouped after each group'a activity and shared out findings. 

(photo courtesy of my awesome department chairman, William Lancaster @phs_lancaster )

I'm interested to see how I can incorporate more kinesthetic learning throughout the course as well! 

Let me know if you have suggestions! I would love your feedback!

Happy School Year to all!

-Jen