Making Moves

Over the Thanksgiving break my family and I took the plunge and moved to Greene County. We have been wanting to move here for several months and the right opportunity presented itself so we went for it. (My house in Farmville still has not sold, so if you know anyone looking to buy I'd love you to tell them!) Growing up, my family moved about every four years and I grew to detest moving. It's not the heavy lifting I hate, but the process. Moving forces you to go through all of your old things and evaluate what you need to keep and what you should part with. It's time consuming and sometimes difficult to part with things that you know you have not seen or touched in years. Inevitably, you will end up in an argument with your spouse over an item or where something will or will not go in the new house.  While I hate the process, I have to admit that I am happy with the result. We love our new home and we are much better off having evaluated what we needed to keep and what we did not need. The process was messy but the end product was worth it.

The process did get me thinking about teaching. Teachers are notorious pack rats. We horde things that we think we will use later and things tend to sit around. Maybe a good clean out is good from time to time for us as well. But I'm not just talking about the physical things like old activities and lesson plan notebooks. What old practices do you still have that maybe need to be let go as well? Are there areas where you could clean out and move up?

I attended our District Literacy Framework Team meeting yesterday and we examined some common practices that we saw across all grade levels in our district. While most of the teaching practices had some very good things to offer, I also saw some things that commonly looked like teacher-centered instruction. The teacher was doing all the talking, and student engagement was low. These are old things that hang around in our practice. They are easy practices to keep, but we really know deep down that we should probably throw them out. Take some time to consider what you may be keeping in your practice that could use a good cleaning. Consider making a move up!