Well, another day. I continued with my "new curriculum". I have mixed emotions about it. Are the kids having fun? Yes, too much in a way. I learned in a core content literacy PD that I attended earlier this year (the best PD I have ever attended by far) that a classroom in which children are truly engaged and learning can be "messy" so to speak. I'm good with that, I tend to be a rather unconventional individual in a lot of ways. However, they are getting just too loud, and I feel I have no control over the room. I also question whether the learning that I want to take place is occurring. Today I tried to play a game with most of my classes at the end where I quizzed them. Universally, they could not answer my questions as they related to the terms that they had been working on the past two days, but when I asked them a question related to something we covered last week the "old fashioned way" (remember the old Smith-Barney commercials with Sir John Guilgud?) they got it right. I shared this fact with them, they were not pleased that things may revert back to the old textbook, homework, etc. method. However, I also told them that their learning was the reason we were all there, no matter how it had to take place.
I spoke with an experienced teacher across the hall who is very supportive of my new methods. (FWIW, all of my neighboring teachers are in favor of this, and are supportive, even if my kid's volume level bleeds over to their room.) My neighbor who I was asking advice of said that maybe the learning was there, that maybe it was how the questions was being presented. She may very well be right. In any event, I am going to give them a quiz tomorrow, we'll see what transpires. I have had some problems with kids stepping up to the bar and delivering to the class in a decent volume, etc. I told them that the next time we did this that things would be much more formal, i.e.: they would get a rubric, etc. This was just a trial run.
I'm trying something new for managing my class, we'll see how it goes. More on that later. My problem, and maybe all new teachers go through this, is that I want so badly to have that warm, fun, welcoming classroom, but when I try to have that, I seem to get taken advantage of. They bring out "Sgt. Dickinson, former Infantry/Armor NCO". That is not the person I want to be, and that is not the classroom I want. More to follow, the week is young yet.