One of my greatest frustrations in teaching is waiting for – what feels like hours – as my students wade through their bags and files to find the draft or handout they’re looking for. The ticking of the clock slowly comes into my awareness and with every second, it gets louder and louder as I gather my wits together and desperately try to hold onto them while every part of me wants to scream.
I’m not even going into how much learning time is saved when students are organized and how effective, productive and chaos-free they feel even outside of the classroom. You already know all of that.
Nancie Atwell’s In the Middle alleviated a lot of this frustration by teaching me how to help students organize themselves. The second chapter of the book titled ‘Getting Started’ is easily one of the most important writings on teacher effectiveness I have ever read. I highly recommend a reading (or a rereading) at the beginning of your school year.
A few years ago, just when I thought I had conquered paper abysses in bottomless student bags, I had the good fortune of teaching the same batch of students as they moved to 8th grade. I thought all the groundwork I had laid would come to fruition since I didn’t have to get them organized all over again. A quick 10-minute reminder should do. It did. They remembered exactly how to keep the paper load in order.
Except I didn’t realize that they’d throw away all the handouts, notes and even their own writing during the summer holidays. Many were even proud that they had contributed to the planet by recycling. I had planned the year and the unit by banking on so much from the previous year but had to tweak everything, and print much of it all over again (thereby undoing all their recycling effort). I was left unhappy that I couldn’t fully capitalize on the foundation we had built.
This is when I devised the Year In Review handout that I’d give out at the end of the year to help students navigate the paper mountains at their homes. Clearly, they couldn’t keep everything. So, I made a list of things they should, under 3 headers:
- The knowledge they must carry forward for next year and later
- Personal work we must preserve for ourselves
- Reference material needed for next year and later
This is the handout I made at the end of the glorious academic year 2018-19:
The word “later” in the headers also sent my students the message that the work we do is not limited in its time and scope to just this trimester, this year and the upcoming exam.
This handout was a game-changer in the subsequent years. I had to reteach and reprint to a limited number of students who were either new or recycled everything anyway. Sometimes I could ask them to photocopy a friend’s old handout or just share for the time being. I could reference old lessons and recap things quicker without confronting blank faces. This small handout allowed me to make learning less isolated and bound to units, trimesters and grades and more expansive and inclusive of our past learning, experiences, strengths, challenges and selves. There was scope for a new opportunity for students to realize, “Hey, I struggled with this last year but it’s got easier this time,” that they were growing, that growth in writing takes time, and so much more.
The transition to online learning in 2020 and the subsequent reliance on Google Docs in place of paper handouts led me to tweak this system slightly. I taught students how to name files for easy access later. “Name your file not for tomorrow’s Veena but for next year’s Veena.” I was also able to make a folder with all the handouts and reference material and make it available to them. (I wonder all the time whether they’re less organized because of this kind of spoon-feeding. I don’t know.)
Why am I sharing all this at the beginning of the school year?
Because knowing you will have a Year in Review at the end of the year means that you can make different choices and small tweaks throughout the year to make the lesson planning and prep for the Year in Review a breeze. Needless to say, planning this lesson, which takes quite a bit of time, at the last leg of the year amidst bone-deep exhaustion might mean that we decide to just not do it. So, looking ahead could mean that you mention to students they must not lose a handout as you pass it out. For the more organized teachers, it could mean you include a symbol or a note in the header or footer which indicates to students that they must hold on to it. For the most organized teachers, it could even mean they’re filling up this handout as they go – unit by unit, or even week by week. Essentially, you’re doing this for the end-of-year you, not today’s you.
Even better, doing this could make it starkly clear to you which lessons and pieces of knowledge are crucial for your students for now, next year and later, and may influence how you prioritize your time, feedback, what you decide to reteach and what you decide to let go. If you are a newish teacher, this can change your game significantly.
If you’re in the part of the world that begins their school year around now, I’m sending you the best of wishes all the way from India. I hope this is the best year yet for you and your students. Cheers!
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