CURMUDGUCATION: Eight Weeks of Summer: Professional Growth Plans

CURMUDGUCATION: Eight Weeks of Summer: Professional Growth Plans

Eight Weeks of Summer: Professional Growth Plans
This post is week 1 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.

This is a little blogventure put on by hotlunchtray.com; for eight weeks they invite teachers to respond to a prompt about how they actually spend summer. I am a sucker for A) busting the myth that teacher summers are all unicorns and pina coladas and B) a prompt. I am, of course, a retired teacher, but I'm just going to cheat and write about summers gone by. So I also get to enjoy C) the rosy glow of nostalgia. There's also the promise of D) a chance to win an Amazon gift card, but when it comes to winning things I generally have E) no chance in hell. My assumption is that life has already so richly rewarded me that additional bonuses would be unfair. If you want to join in, follow the link-- but work quickly because the first week ends today.

So this is week one, and the prompt is "What are your professional learning goals this summer?"

My most common goal in the summer was to reread at least a third of the list of works that I taught. Yes, a really responsible teacher would have read everything, but a summer is only so long, and I think my view of some works benefited from breaks between readings. "I read it when I was in college" is a poor approach to the teaching of literature. At a minimum, your own growth and experience will have opened you up to new ways to see the work. Additionally, you should have absorbed enough of your students' point of view to see ways that the literature connects to them (and it won't necessarily be the same way it connected a decade ago).

Because I taught mostly American literature, I also read plenty of American history (actually, I still do that). You can't possibly know everything there is to know about the context of the work you teach, and I found that works about the history often informed or even radically changed how I taught some pieces.

It's important, especially at the secondary level, to be an expert in your content area, and you can't do that relying on the material you picked up in college courses when you were young, material that steadily fades into the past. If you learn best by taking classes, then do that, but hopefully your CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Eight Weeks of Summer: Professional Growth Plans