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Is It Worth It? Let Me Work It. 

12/11/2012

1 Comment

 
I've been wondering this a lot lately-- given the exponential increase in work necessary to do flipclass (or any teaching, really) well, are the gains I see in my classroom really worth it?

Given the amount of blowback directed towards flipclass teachers lately, much of it unwarranted, I wonder, really, is it worth it?

Given the long workdays (I probably spend 85 percent of my waking hours thinking about school or actively teaching it), I wonder, while stealing a moment to cook dinner or play a bad cover of "Fake Plastic Trees" on my guitar... is it worth it?

I go to bed thinking about schoolwork. I wake up thinking about it. I fight with people on Twitter about it and open myself up to criticism--local and national--because of how I want to run class, and how I try to run it everyday.  (And by "run it," I mean "let students have control of it as much as possible.")

Sometimes, as I look in the mirror at the multiplying gray hairs in my beard, and as I touch the spot on the crown of my head where hair used to be, which now looks increasingly like I have taken a friar's monastic vow, I wonder. 

And that's where it stops. 

In years previous, faced with classes of students with personal, home-based, and academic difficulties, I would have largely checked out. I am not proud of this. 

In years previous, I didn't have a group of people watching my back and pushing me on to greater things. 

In years previous, I didn't have people filling in the gaps of my skill--teaching me how to use structure, how to scaffold lessons up so kids could actually attain heights they never thought they could reach. 

In those years, I wouldn't have gotten to be there as what amounts to my academic dream slowly, then suddenly, appeared on a labyrinthine Google Doc right before my eyes. 

There were no Cheesebuckets then, not that I knew of, nor would I have considered that I would count among my primary inspirations a Biology teacher in British Columbia and a Chem teacher in South Bend. 

And I definitely wouldn't be able to say that the same classes, the difficult ones, would have had their fourth consecutive good day today. I would have never gotten to that tipping point. 

The answer, then, CO-llaborators, is yes. 

Yes it is worth it. It's worth it because of your friendship, your support, your passion, and your skill. It's worth it because we're better together--as teachers and as people--than we could be apart. It's worth it because I get to see the sunlight slowly start to grace the cheeks of students in classes that were once deeply buried underground, through no fault of their own. 

1 Comment
david theriault link
4/7/2013 02:32:46 am

I loved this line: "In years previous, I didn't have a group of people watching my back and pushing me on to greater things."

I made me think of being a parent. So many things my kid didn't want to do but I pushed him anyways because I love him and think he's capable- of swimming, of pitching, of using a big knife. He didn't want to swim, he begged, cried, and pleaded, but I put him in the pool anyways. I love that you trust your team enough to listen to them when they tell you to go for it. That's awesome.

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