Spring Break has come and gone, and every teacher knows what follows thereafter: the Spring “Thing.”
- The “thing” involves a stretch of days where there are no more holidays until Memorial Day, or in some schools, the end of the year
- It’s a time when most states dig deep into standardized testing
- When the “thing” enters the classroom, teachers realize that they only have 30-ish days to “cover the rest of the curriculum!”
- During this time, administrators are looking at their schedules and realize that they’re crunched for time, too – so we see them performing walkthroughs and evaluations at a much higher scale
- The sun’s out – and for many students, so are their buns… increasing the ratio of dress code violations
- This is the time when students get comfortable with the teacher, thinking their “pal-like status” will permit them to get away with more inappropriate behavior
- Spring “Thing” also gives teachers the false illusion of slacking back on their requirements and increasing the amount of disciplinary meetings
- Teachers largest amounts of absences – mostly planned – often occur during “Thing-time,” many times leaving the teachers who don’t take off to pick up the slack and coverage
- For some teachers and students, they’ve had enough of one another and are ready to move onto the next class
- And, almost without failure, that end of the school year always seems just too far away…….
So what to do?
Here are a few helpful guidelines:
- Embrace the “Spring Thing” – see if there’s a lesson or 2 where we can take our students outside to learn; check over the security guidelines with teammates first and, if it’s possible, implement a strategy to mitigate lost class time
- Have quality conversations with students – teachers are in the classroom for the right reasons, and a large part of that is making for lifelong learners; education doesn’t end at the bell, nor does it end the last day of school, so keep in mind that we’re continuing a student’s Newtonian motion through from this school year moving into next
- Do something different – I plan on opening up my classroom 2x a week to allow students to come and eat lunch with me, some of their friends, and we’ll base it off of a single, solitary topic and traverse from there
- Go big with a project – I close out my last 2 lessons by scaling back on the instruction and instituting Project-Based Learning units. If a teachers interested in incorporating PBL into the classroom to counterpunch the “Thing,” Edutopia has been doing a great job of focusing on PBL this year, which one can read articles and examples on here
- Find an educational game to play with students – I plan on adapting TCI’s American Revolution Capture the Flag for the War of 1812
- Do something nice for fellow teachers – this can be implemented at just about any time in the school year, but we seem to close our doors more and eat together less as the school year wanes; don’t lose sight of colleagues and the school’s collective conscience and morale.
- Do something nice for the principal / support staff – see above
- Put something on the calendar to work towards – it might be the plans this summer to write a book, a weekend getaway, which days to work on curriculum, or professional development that will bolster and strengthen us for next year
- Ask students to help plan for next year – though teachers still have new skills, concepts, and curriculum to teach, have students reflect on what went well and help improve what didn’t
- Develop lessons that last a lifetime – if a teacher is still commanding the classroom like they did on day 1, well, then consider the school year mission accomplished, even if “Spring Thing” tries to say otherwise
