In approximately one week, I will be traveling across the lake with thirty three fifth graders and six parents to spent five days in the woods learning about science. Am I excited? Well...
Seven years ago, I went on this trip for the first time, and it was incredible. I bonded with my students. We all learned things about science we didn't know before. I checked zero emails the whole time I was there. My biggest worry was whether or not my students washed their hands before going into a stall to avoid getting poison ivy on their bums. We even got to have a snowball fight on our first night there. I remember sitting on the long bus ride home at the end of the five days, thinking: Did it have to be over yet?
The second year I went was nearly equally wonderful. I loved my class, and I'd forgotten a lot of the surprises of the program. We get marshmallows and a campfire again tonight? We get to pretend Mike and Ikes are bugs and eat them? We get to go up a tree and see the forest from the top? Yes, please!
The seventh year, not so much. I actively avoided the small group lessons and stared at the fire or the stars instead of listening to the stories. I even occasionally snuck off to take a nap or read a book while the kids were out with their leaders (if the program director knew this, she'd kill me...so you're sworn to secrecy). I knew all of the surprises. I knew all of the words to all of the surprises.
I expect this year to be much like the last year. No surprises. Little excitement. It's still fun, mostly because the kids make it fun, but if I'm being honest, I miss the way it felt the first few times. I miss the way I felt about it.
Sometimes it's hard to be away for five days for personal reasons, but the worst part is personal only in the sense that I'm personally exasperated by everything that needs to be prepped before I go. I've got people staying at my house that weekend (which means Thursday night cleaning), I've got to pack (which I dread and thus means Thursday night packing), and I've got to write sub plans.
Ugh. Sub plans.
If there was one thing in the world that I would like to free teachers from, it's sub plans. I mean, no sub plans and no grading would be nice. But eh, I'd take no sub plans.
Every year, I wonder how I'm going to keep twenty-five fourth graders busy for an hour and fifteen minutes at a time while I'm gone, and every year, I try something different. Sometimes it's textbook work (no good, they riot). Sometimes it's worksheet packets (no good, they finish early). Sometimes it's stations (no good, substitutes hate stations, and it's in my best interest to keep subs happy). So this year, I'm trying something different.
The summer after my first year of teaching, I created a website called Lusher Links that gave students a ton of options for games, interactives, and practice in math, science, and social studies. (I don't want to brag, but I wrote the website. Like, from scratch. In html. Yeah, man, I got skillz.) After years of putting in check requests for reimbursements for the hosting and server fees, I finally wised up to free website options that the world wide web offers and transferred all of the links over to a google site. Which is great because it links to my school email address and it's easy to edit. It's not the prettiest, but if you've seen my bulletin boards at school, you know that "pretty" is low on my list of priorities.
Recently, I've been using it as a hub for when students do research or activities that require a lot of different websites. Kids type slower than old people drive, so giving them a paper list with addresses to input is asking for frustration and death. Nothing will get done. Literally, my end of class alarm will go off, and they'll say, "But I just finished typing in the first website!" I know that they just need typing practice, but seriously, small people. I typed that slow when I was your age, but that's because back then personal computers were less common than Tickle Me Elmos. Wait, Tickle Me Elmos are easy to get now, too? I can't speak to you right now.
We've been working our way towards human systems recently in class, and so I've decided to try a modified version of the flipped classroom while I'm out. For those who don't know what a "flipped classroom" is, it's the flip of the traditional classroom. Instead of learning about something in class and practicing at home, you learn about it at home and practice in class--where you have someone who can help you and give you feedback. I dig it. While I don't expect that my classroom will ever full transform into a flipped classroom, I'm going to try something like it while I'm gone. Students will watch videos about the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and nutrition and do activities on the computer while the sub is there. When I return, we'll do the harder stuff. Or at least, we'll try.
I spent about an hour and a half amassing and formatting the links for this video/activity page. By the time I was done, the inside of my right eye was bloodshot and my vision was blurry. (Although, I've been noticing a steady decline in my vision these days, so take that with a grain of salt. Right now, I have to squint to see the clock on the cable box clearly...twelve feet away. You have no idea how sad I am about this.) Even with all that time spent staring at a screen, I still haven't written the actual plan for the sub. Despite my copy-paste habits in sub plan writing, chances are, it'll still take me 45 minutes or more to put it together. So basically, I'll have spent more than two hours on a lesson that will only last an hour and fifteen minutes.
And that, my friends, is why sub plans are the worst.
[Completely unrelated side note: This is my first post without mind-mapping this week. It was an accident--oops, I forgot--but I'm kind of glad I did because I noticed how much time I spent staring off into space trying to figure out what to write. I'm not sure how it compares in terms of time, but this mind mapping business...it's growing on me.]
I LOVE mind mapping! John Krasinski is pretty cool, too. :)
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