I spent 5 hours today cleaning out my desk, going through files, recycling mountains of paper. In concrete terms, it means school is over. Graduation is tomorrow. And then: I’m on summer vacation [1]. So now a bit of a brain dump as I take stock.

I’ve found this year to be an important transition point:

For the first time, I taught ninth graders, and for the first time, I taught geometry. And in order to do that, I worked an insane number of hours with my partner-in-crime and co-teacher BK in order to write an entire curriculum from scratch, from head to toe. Yup, you read that right. We — in essence — wrote a textbook. We sequenced the course, we wrote materials and designed activities for the course, and we had kids do all the heavy lifting. There are particular moments as a teacher which standout as “big moments.” Moments where we know we’ve developed immensely as a teacher. Transitioning from individual and partner work into total groupwork was one of those moments. Converting my non-AP calculus course into a standards based grading course was one of those moments. And writing a curriculum from scratch, in a single year, with an insanely thoughtful collaborator was the most recent of those moments [2].

The previous two years (before this school year) were two of the hardest years I’ve had as a teacher. We teachers were called on to do a lot in the wake of our school’s five year strategic plan — and it became overwhelming. I had no work-life balance. And  I became a bit curmudgeonly because of those tough years. But this year, things have been better. I still have no work-life balance, but the overwhelming onslaught of initiatives have subsided. One of the things I did to actively try to stay positive this year was to write down every single day one good thing that happened to me — big or small. From the first day of classes to the last. And those things are archived here. This was especially important because at the start of the school year, my mom was diagnosed with cancer (she is doing very well, fyi, no worries).

That being said, I am going to make a goal: that next year, I am going to just let the things that I can’t control go… There’s no point in getting worked up over something that you can’t do anything about. Instead, I’m going to stay loose, and bring back my frivolity and humor, and go off the beaten path in class more. While organizing today, I was looking through a number of old emails and cards from students, and saw so many inside jokes and fun times that they references… and then I thought about this year… and I came up blank. I couldn’t think of a time that I doubled over laughing in class. I couldn’t think of an ongoing joke that I had with a student. I could think of great lessons and a ha moments, but nothing frivolous and fun. So my vow is to make sure that next year involves more joy and laughter. For me, and for my students. Every day.

Wow, yes, this braindump led me to something big. With that, I’m out.

[1] That doesn’t mean I’m done with school. I have lucky 13 college recommendations to write. And two summer projects that each will take 25 hours each to complete (revise my multivariable calculus curriculum; plan for our new schedule next year with longer blocks).

[2] I’ve written entire course curricula before. Calculus, for example. But that took a few years to write and get added to. And Adv. Precalculus, which I did in a single year, but lacked the collaboration and innovation that I was able to do this year with BK.