2 Months later... the challenges we've faced

It has been 2 months since I have blogged about the year... did I mention that this year might be difficult?!? I really had no idea!

So my colleagues and I are teaching outside our comfort zones... Humanities 7 for one grade 7 class and STEM 7 for another grade 7 class (for more on what these mean, please see my first blog post). As the year began, we were also assigned Elective rotation classes (my choices: Drama and Robotics) plus we were tasked with integrating CTF (Career and Technology Foundations) into our timetable. As a whole, my colleagues and I were excited to gain such a tremendous level of control over our schduling but were ignorant to how difficult it would be to prep, teach and assess such a wide variety of subjects. And this was the challenge we were prepared for!

The other major challenge that would catch all three of us off guard this fall was the clientel we would teach this year. The begin with, our group of grade seven's this year, leans heavily towards the young side. From a developmental undrstanding, this means that most of students will struggle with the abstract concepts and lessons that we need to teach; their maturity and brain development keeps them focused in the realm of concrete thought.

Even more challenging was that within our grade seven group (around 85 students) we were given the heads up that 24 of them needed transition planning. We were told about some students (11) who had struggled socially, with mental health, or had senstive information about their family-life that we needed to know in order to tailor our lessons and classroom environments to best help these students learn. On top of that, we also found out that 5 of our grade seven's are English Language Learners (4 of these are Syrian Refugees who arrived in Canada within the last 9 months), and 8 of our grade seven's have serious learning issues (autism, low levels of literacy & numeracy,  cognitive delays, etc.).

That was  almost 30% of our grade sevens that were identified as needing transition planning and 15% of our population that was previously identified as having extreme needs. The school year hadn't even started!

These 2 challenges, student population and programing, created a whirlwind of a school start and each will be the topic of some blogposts to follow. 

Day 1 - Setting some goals

**So I meant to post this at the end of August but somehow forgot and left it in draft mode. Sorry!**

Yesterday was the first official day back.

I was amazed by an inspiring speech by our new superintendent, who was able to show both vulnerbility and vision while remaining authentic, calm and approachable. We formed Profeessinonal Learning Teams (PLT's) that will work quarterly over the year to improve student learning through our work with Assessment. 

This year's PLT is a little different as we will be engaging in action research. I'm excited by this prospect as I've heard the term but actually know very little about it. From what I can gather, we will be trying to use research to improve our practice. I feeling pretty positive about it right now, because it feels like something my colleagues and I have been doing naturally over the last couple of years. 

The goal for our PLT: How can we demonstrate that the process of giving and recieving, gathering and using feedback is a more effective approach for student learning?

  This goal is esspecially important to me this year in light of some conversations and opinions that I have encountered this summer. Some parents are struggling with our school's approach to learning; they dont' understand why we are doing what we are doing and they worry that their children are being negatively impacted by it.

I whole-hearted believe that what we are doing at our school is working with students to help them become the best learner they possibly can. It is my hope that we will be able to use action research to start the process of informing others how empowering our approach to learning is for students.