Letting Go

I had two immediate thoughts after reading Grant Wiggins, "Great Teaching Means Letting Go" blog; first  was that I really struggle with this with my own kids with stuff at home and second I'm such a Type A personality that it would cause me so much stress to do this in the classroom. 

Everyone thinks that teaching high school students is so much easier than elementary because they need less "hand holding" and that's really the furthest from the truth, in reality it's about the same it's just different type of help they need. For reference I teach all four grades (9-12) in high school "regular" 9th grade world history, "honors" 10th world history 2, and "IB" social & cultural anthropology. At the beginning of the year I spend the first week really going on the course work, expectations and how to do everything. I provide explicit instructions, a rubric and student examples for assignments yet with my 9th graders I am always surprised at the sheer number of questions. Their questions aren't always about the assignment I also get a lot of students asking basically for approval with every single step of an assignment. It's as thought they aren't ready for the transfer quite yet and I'm noticing more and more that the transfer isn't really coming with some of them. This is where my Type A personality sets in and rather than the transferring I just keep scaffolding for them which only causes me more problems and them less responsibility/ownership of their work and or grade. Granted it gets a little better in the upper grades but not much; I'm currently seeing the 12th graders won't accept the transfer because it's too much work for them. 

Reflecting back on this past school year we were full distant learning for one whole year, we didn't even attempt a hybrid schedule until late March, then in April we came back to school 4 days a week. What I'm noticing in all my classes I'm still doing a lot of scaffolding all these months later with technology stuff, ie: how to access stuff in Google Classroom, how to check assignments, reminding them to hit submit and so on. At this age and at this stage of use in technology and especially living right outside of Silicon Vally, I should be able to give an assignment and a few suggestions on how to go about it and let them go. However, I'm still scaffolding them through it and at times I'm not sure if it's because of me and my Type A personality or they really need it. One thing that I will say is that students I've had for multiple classes there's way less scaffolding and more real connections being made to the work and the material being taught. 

Next school year I will defiantly be more explicit in the first couple weeks of school when doing all the expectations and such to include all technology that will be used in the class as well as my website so that I'm not sitting in May still doing so much scaffolding like explaining how to find my website and stuff in Google Classroom. 

WOW...this post really hit home. Going forward even in these last two weeks of school I need to work on letting go and seeing how my students use what they've been taught in various situations. I also need to practice this at home with my own kids as well. 

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 30, 2021 at 2:59 PM

    Shanice Solomon FRIT 7234 Y01

    It is interesting that people think that it is easier to teach high school. You all definitely have more rigorous content in your curricula. As a former middle school teacher, I agree that the older kids still may depend on us a little. Work ethic seems to be the hardest hurdle when attempting to release responsibility to students. Similar to your 12th graders, I have had students who are resistant to this transfer due to the mental workload. It is frustrating at times, especially when we know they are capable. I also agree that Wiggin's blog post helped me reflect on how I need to work on letting go in the classroom.

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    1. Jen TaylorJune 1, 2021 at 6:49 PM

      People say well it's easier because the students are more independent. Me personally as a teacher tip my hat to all the elementary teachers I couldn't cover all the different contents required for each grade level. Yes work ethic is definitely lacking especially at the end of the year; we are still in school and the students are beyond checked out. I'm sure you also notice depending on when in the year students resist transfer more other times.

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  2. Sara BrandMay 30, 2021 at 4:24 PM

    I didn't connect this to home life, but after reading your post, you're totally right. I suppose I am "Type A" too because I am the organizer, scheduler, and delegator of my house and I have to work really hard to let go of trying to control every little thing. My soon-to-be 16 year old has been fully digital this school year and at first I was checking every platform for him, writing down all his assignments, checking them, and scheduling when he worked on them. This caused a lot of conflict in our home and I'm not sure how he could have possibly found joy in his learning with all the pressure and control. Eventually, I had to learn to let go. We made a general checklist of platforms for him to look at and created an organizational system for him to keep track of his assignments, and then I left him to it. Sure, I peeked at his Google Drive to make sure ongoing assignments were being worked on and kept an eye on his gradebook, but the responsibility was his and he really took ownership of it once he was allowed to do so! In the classroom we need to do the same: give them the tools they need to take control of their own learning, and then let go while keeping a watchful eye for those who need the support.

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    1. Jen TaylorJune 1, 2021 at 8:39 PM

      I'm right there with you for sure. When we first went to distance learning I was literally going daylight to dark between my students and my 5th and 1st grader at the time. Keeping my planner and their dates up as well was mentally and physically draining. Fast forward to this school year my schedule was more demanding and so I was forced to transfer that responsibility to them. While it has been a learning process for them it's also been good for them to become more independent. In the classroom is a tricky situation because most students don't want to ask for help so I have to try and find a happy medium of transferring and helping.

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