Existential Crisis?

I just finished a 3 day Science as Thinking institute through PEBC. It was amazing and I learned oh so much about inquiry and how to foster real, valuable, scientific thinking in students. Actual learning through teaching for understanding. We were given this brilliant book and I’m in the process of devouring it. The institute was all Expeditionary Learning stuff without actually calling it Expeditionary Learning. That ‘rigor’ that was so elusive and confusing to me before? I totally get it now! That ‘discourse’ that was so forced before? I know how to make it more authentic and natural now!  If you’re in a school that values quality professional development and a budget exists for PD, I would recommend checking out PEBC – they run institutes for all the core subjects.

I’m in my 7th year of teaching science. I learned how to teach through an intern program. It was trial by fire (literally – some kids lit a fire in my room one day). I developed some very bad ‘survival’ habits to lesson planning those first 2 years. In my credentialing program, I learned that ‘inquiry’ meant doing labs (science teachers, you know what I’m talking about) and having students predict and explain through modeling real word phenomena. Lastly, I make my kids take notes, and my assessments this year are unit tests. Shock horror. All joking aside though, I am very seriously reconsidering what I am doing as a science teacher. What are my kids actually learning?

I’m feeling the need to scrap everything I do and start from scratch. This past week has been somewhat soul shaking (a little dramatic, maybe?) for me. I may be in the midst of a yet another teacher existential crisis.

New additions to my closet and a glass of wine are helping me weather this crisis tonight. I have a new coat! This Madewell City Grid Coat was on super sale and I justified the purchase by rationalizing away the fact that I have my favorite Arcteryx and another similar coat (but none of them are warm and black!) already hanging in my closet.

glasses: warby parker – coat: madewell – cardigan and blouse: uniqlo – jeans: 3×1 – boots: franco sarto