A New Year

This blog is going to be a record. A record of my learning as a teacher, with more than 10 years experience, who is taking a leap of faith.

This year, my colleagues and I have decided to take on a new challenge. The three of us are going to collaborate to teach as much of grade 7 as we can. For those who know me, you know this isn't completely new. I've held the belief for many years that teachers teach students not subjects and that if required I could take on any class.

The difference this year is that I am going to try and put my money where my mouth is. Though collaborative support, we are going to each teach a section of Humanities (Language Arts and Social Studies) and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). We are going to integrate as much as we can in order to show our students the real-life applications of their learning and we are going to rely on thinking, feedback and reflection to demonstrate our students' success.

In all honesty, I know that I'm feeling equal parts excited and nervous right now. I've never delved this deeply into the STEM curriculum and I know that some of this will be hard for me. I also know that as a learner, I usually have to live through an experience before I truly understand it. Our hope when we first proposed this idea last spring was to improve our students' learning experience by allowing greater flexibility in the schedule, but there is the worry that my inexperience will somehow prove a disservice to my students.

Fortunately, my team has an amazing capacity to collaborate and I believe that over the last two years together, we have proved to each other and those around us that there is very little we can't achieve when we put our minds to it. I know that I can rely on these people to encourage me, support me and catch me as necessary and that gives me a great deal of confidence moving forward.