Time For a GIANT Step!

It must be at once satisfying and discouraging to hike the Appalachian Trail. The trail can be considered a lengthy series of shorter hikes. How satisfying it must be to finish one of those shorter hikes.  Yet, how frustrating it must be to start at square one again on another section.

Teaching can be like that. You work like crazy to accomplish a goal, and just as you begin to celebrate meeting it, you find yourself at the start of a brand new, though somewhat similar, challenge.

That's where I am right now. Over the past few years, my program has shifted significantly toward a more customized approach to teaching and learning. This year has been huge in that regard with the move to Measurement Topics, Learning Targets, and the Common Core State Standards. Great work!  Plenty of success!  Loads of learning! Time to change it! <Gulp.>

Like the hiker who has just reached the end of a trail, it can be hard to leave behind the successes of the past in order to move on to the next part of the journey.  However, that's just what we need to do in a continually evolving world.

What's next?  A GIANT step! Next year, my students and I will make the shift toward an even more customized approach, one that features progressions of Learning Targets as opposed to grade level sets of standards. For the first time, I will have the freedom (and expectation) to meet all of my students where they are and assist them through a group of Learning Targets that become more complex and challenging at each level. In other words, a student who enters my middle school classroom not having met the more basic Learning Targets will meet them in my class.  No skipsies!

This seems a bit daunting when you think about it. Fortunately, like the AT hiker who has finished several sections of trail, I've learned a great deal about how to solve the problems I will likely encounter during this stage of the journey. All of the work related to leveled readings, classroom management software, independent learning methods, and other things I've learned during my customized learning adventure will be put to good use.

I, for one, am so excited that I've been living a dual life of late. One Mr. Davis has been managing this year's approach. The other Mr. Davis has already begun revising and developing plans for next year's approach.

Someday, maybe I'll reach the end of this educational AT (on the summit of Maine's Mt. Katahdin). Of course, I have heard talk about extending the AT into Canada, so I'm not expecting to reach the end any time soon!