#10yearchallenge

Lately I've seen many posts from the #10yearschallenge on my Facebook and Instagram feeds. And while my immediate response to posting side-by-side photos of myself was a fervent, "Ugh. No thanks," at my phone screen, it did get me thinking about where I was ten years ago and how I've changed over that time. 

Ten years ago I was 5 months away from marrying my husband. I was practicing yoga everyday and teaching yoga classes a couple nights a week. I had stopped eating animal products and had started learning how to cook vegan after a concerning cholesterol report. And I was in my 4th year of teaching, my first in 5th grade.

Since then I've gotten married. I've had a baby. Instead of getting up for a vigorous yoga practice each morning, I am leashing up a rambunctious catahoula leopard dog named Kyber, to run off some energy before we leave for the day. I'm teaching 4th grade. And I'm sticking my toes in the water of being a writer.

Of all the things on the list, being a teacher seems to be the one constant. I'm in the same district, at the same school, teaching in the same elementary age range. The teacher across the hall who became my best friend that year as we stood in our doorways every morning to greet students, sharing greetings, jokes, and exasperated sighs with them and each other is still my favorite person to work with. I still have the same desk chair. It's still terrible.

But my day-to-day teaching life has also undergone big changes.

If I look back on my teaching philosophies of ten years ago, the big picture is still pretty much the same. But a lot has changed in the execution.

Some practices I've abandoned in the last ten years:

• Homework: I would assign it, check it, and grumble when it wasn't done. I spent time trying to differentiate assignments, only to find they still weren't completed. Games, bribes, and consequences. I tried them all. Ten years later, I stand firm against homework. I ask only that my students read nightly; no logs, summaries, no time requirements, or parent signatures. 
• Assigned seats: It wasn't long into my first 4 years that I abandoned the matching nametags affixed to various desk configurations. I remember trying groups, semi-circles, and rows. Eventually I abandoned desks for tables. With grant money I now have standing desks, wheeled chairs with adjustable work tables, yoga balls, floor cushions, stools, bean bags, a rocking chair, small group tables, and a loft.  
• Behavior rewards/consequences: When it comes to classroom behavior, I am still trying to find my management/conformity balance, but I've mostly eliminated rewards and consequences. I try to employ logical results (maybe a change in seating to get back on track or popcorn and a movie to celebrate finishing a book group) and communicate with students through personal notes and talking one-on-one rather than the clips, cards, or elaborate point earning/spending systems I've tried in the past.
• Standardized test strategies: Gah. Remembering this one hurts a little. Ten years ago we were in the thick of CRCT, and test-taking strategies were all the rage. Every January we'd start a schoolwide test-training, uh I think we called it a game... but just cause you put syrup on it, doesn't make it pancakes, amiright?... Students would track FOCUS points for increasing blocks of time over several weeks, performing meaningless, ungraded practice tests intending to build up their ability to sustain focus for an extended period of time. When the class reached a certain number of focus points there gold coins affixed to doors and prizes galore. Of course, who needs to practice for months on a once-a-year test when we can take them 9 times a year instead? I'm pretty certain we're still on the wrong side of this testing thing, but ten years ago, I thought I was doing what I should be doing to help my students succeed.

Even as I look back and cringe at these practices, I know I was doing them with the best intent. A combination of doing what I was asked/expected to do, what worked for the people who knew better than me, and what I thought was just how it's done.

Ten years later, I know that nothing is "just how it's done" no matter how ingrained a practice seems to be. There are always different ways to do things, but it's almost never easy to do the different thing. With ten years comes the confidence (or blind gumption) to take risks, to say, "I'm going to try this instead." There are mountains of books atop endless fields of research on teaching practice because we are constantly trying to figure out ways to better serve the kids we teach and each other. 

It's taken me ten years to come to and act on conclusions I've made about these four practices, I can only imagine what I'll think today's me in 2029...