Love Trying New Things (Doesn't Always Mean They Work)

So we are three days into a new school year, and I'm already tired. It takes some time to readjust to teaching each year. But getting me through this year - new ideas, activities, and philosophies.

So far this year I have decided to try a couple new things - flip one of my classes (AP Euro, more on why in a moment) and the 20% model (in standard economics). These new adventures in education have me and my students excited about the possibilities this year holds.

In my AP Euro History class, it's the first year I'm teaching the course which adds its own excitement, I have decided to flip as much as possible. Since it is my first year teaching this particular course, it made since for me to pick it to flip. I'll be making most things from scratch anyway, so I decided to just flip it from the beginning rather than redo everything later. The possibilities that this brings are exciting. I look forward to holding more in depth Socratic discussions in class and less stand and deliver lecturing. The thought of this also has the kids excited - they also like the idea of trying to flip sections of chapters as well.

In my standard economics class, I am experimenting with a new concept to me - the 20% model. Giving the students almost complete control of their learning for 20% of the class. They pick a topic or question they want to find the answer to and they research and report their discovery back to us. I have kicked around lots of ways to do this, to keep the kids accountable, and read the Nerdy Teachers post about the same idea and will be stealing his (seeThe Nerdy Teacher) for details. The kids loved the idea of this - and I love the idea of it but also love the idea that it may or may not work. And as I told my students, it's okay to try new ideas (based on good research, thoughts, and reason) and they not work. It means you do more research, thinking, and reasoning and then try again. This has me the most excited - it will either succeed and be awesome or (in the words of my seniors) be an EPIC FAIL.

Here's to 2013-2014 - the year of new ideas (and possible failures, and that's okay)