Things to remember about teaching

Be very explicit on my first day of class about my expectations. I need to tell them that I teach differently. I need to tell them that this is a class that will be frustrating at times, but the goal is that we think as students and teachers. I need to tell them, like I told the high schoolers, that this will be a hard class but that they will learn a lot from it.

I need to put in my syllabus that if they turn papers in to me that they need to be typed.

I'm always thinking of things that I need to do differently, but as I type this my mind has gone blank.

I need to make sure that I have established trust and community. I think explicit expectations will help in this.

I want to make sure that we do literature circles, and that we do reading workshop in class. These are really important. I want to use contemporary young adult literature as the main focus. Or we could do two literature circles, one with the "canon" and one with young adult literature.

I'll continue with the notebooks, but I guess I'll collect them three different times and each time they will be worth one hundred points. I like the unit plan, the inquiry paper, the responses to what we read. I would rather have a blog than a discussion board because I want them to see what everyone is thinking, and it is a lot less clicking.

I will return to these ideas at a later time . . .