We did it! We made it to the end of the school year. Now it’s time to dive into a summer that will last approximately eight seconds, and then we will be back at it again. Funny how that works. You probably have a year-end checklist that the admin is making you work through. But I think we should all add a self-checklist that will help us analyze how our year went. I’ve done the whole “I will remember next year to edit this lab” method. It doesn’t work for me. Even though next year is only eight seconds away, I can forget a lot by then. As you review how your classes went, consider these questions.
Were the kids engaged?
Were the kids able to internalize the information?
Were the kids able to produce the correct product?
Were the kids likely to retain the information?
Here are some concepts from your class that you should give an honest review.
1. Flow of Units
Did the order that you placed your units encourage kids to flow from one concept to the other? It always seems that there is a unit that gets stuck in somewhere. It doesn’t feel cohesive. Think about where that unit could go. Don’t tell the college board, but I teach equilibrium (which is unit 7 out of 9 in AP chem) in the first semester. I made that choice a while ago. It has made a great improvement in the flow of the class, the mental load balance between the semesters, and their ability to apply the concept. Think about what units you could move to make the class better. Here is a tough idea. Consider if there are any units that should be cut from your class. I know, I know, they are all important. But are they? Could the students be better served by having one less unit, but understanding more deeply the remaining ones? These are some valuable ideas to wrestle with.
2. Lessons
You know that one lesson that just falls flat? It made so much sense in your head. You spent so much time and energy preparing it. And splat. It landed on the lab floor with as much enthusiasm as a wet rag. Make note of these lessons. Don’t’ repeat them next year, too. Write yourself some notes about what went wrong.
I am not a calendar guy. I don’t love the tyranny of the calendar. But I can get behind when a lesson that I thought would take one day takes two. Make note of that. Give yourself the insights about the timing that you will want next year.
3. Labs
Some labs are never going to come off your schedule. For me, it’s teaching mole ratios by shooting pipet rockets down the hall. For one, it’s a nostalgic lab. I remember doing the lab with my favorite high school teacher. After I did the lab, I forgot about it. Until years later, when I decided to write a lab just like Mr. Gantz. I went to visit him, but he had developed ALS so severely that he had lost that ability to speak or write. I told him that I was going to figure out his lab and would do it in honor of him. And that is exactly what I do. I’m never getting rid of that lab. It teaches well, it uses mathematical modeling skills, it acts as an anchor phenomenon for so many different units.
But then there are some other ones. The ones that after 15 minutes in the lab I wish I had never started. The ones that take way longer than their value. The ones that the kids get so bogged down in the math that they can’t recognize the chemical concept. The ones that have percent errors so high that the kids can’t even remember why they should get a result. Those are the labs that need to be removed, changed, or swapped out. Make note of that now, and not next year when you are setting it up again.
4. Activities
We all do some dry labs, group activities, and the like. I choose to use as many games as possible. But I never want to do any activity that doesn’t build on my curriculum. I am allergic to mindlessly filling time. That is why I created this website and the games on it. I have used games in my classroom for over twenty years. They were written on scraps of paper for years. I would go into my phone after we played a new game and write down changes to the rules. Then again, the next year. Pretty soon, I had a rule book created and we could efficiently use our class time to play something competitive that actually helps build their understanding. We should all do that with all of our activities. Did you put it in the right spot? Did it last the right amount of time? Was the outcome worth the effort?
5. Extra-curricular Activities
I think this gets overlooked all too often. Maybe you aren’t heavily involved in the extra-curriculars so this will be a brief audit. Or maybe you are like me, and you do so many, that school starts to feel like the extra thing. I coached two middle school sports, one high school sport, am overseeing two senior projects, and taking a group of 11 students to the Philippines as soon as the school year ends. All of those extra items need to be analyzed. Are you growing your impact with students in the ways that you want? Do you have the energy to give to the extra-curriculars and still be excellent in the classroom? By the way, I answered these questions for myself. I’m backing down to one sport for next year. I’m not going to the Philippines next year. But I do want to take kids to Togo, Africa… I guess I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
So, before you put on your Hawaiian shirt and put your feet up, take a minute to review. You will be thanking yourself next year. Which starts in approximately eight seconds.
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