Planning the Course

My school uses a "looping" strategy for teacher rotation. What that means is that teachers follow their students from grade to grade: from grade 6 through grade 8 and back to grade 6 again.

This is a marvelous idea in theory and in practice has many benefits. Teacher get to know students much better, children feel more secure in having familiar faces in front of them every September, parents have fewer teachers to get to know and stay in contact with, just to name a few pluses.

On the other hand, (you knew that was coming) the policy is murderously difficult for science teachers. Planning and executing science instruction is unlike planning and execution of any other subject area. In New York State, the content is rigorous and unrelenting (a mile wide AND a mile deep if you read through the core curriculum objectives!). Science instruction demands not only a deep understanding of the content, but quite a bit of materials gathering before class, materials management in the classroom, and materials clean-up after class. No othe subject area teacher is faced with such a burden of planning, materials management, and cleaning-up.

Extensive planning goes down a lot more easily if you know that it will make your life simpler next year - you can build on and improve existing plans rather than starting from scratch. The logistical workload decreases and you can concentrate on doing a better strategic job in the classroom, polishing your presentation, anticipating student difficulties, etc.

With looping, that strategy breaks down and every year is like starting over. It's nearly impossible to store plans and materials from this year, not to be used again for 3 years.

I have spent most of this Memorial Day weekend planning for next year. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to plan a new course. I am enthusiastic about it, however, as I fully expect to be teaching Regents Living Environment for some time to come. I will be updating my website with new resources as they become available. My major accomplishment this weekend was to develop a vocabulary database for the living environment curriculum (with thanks to Bill Siebert via Mr. Comet). I am also creating a list of links to other science teachers who are teaching Regents Living Environment. Stay tuned.