After this past school year, the only thing that I want to do is look forward. Over the last few years I’ve tripped, fallen, and made some bad mistakes. But in that process, I’ve also made a better version of myself, and hopefully for others.

Our course description tells us to focus on “Patterns and Processes.” I’ve come to depend on patterns in my classroom that are linear and predictable: class schedules, routines, procedures, and assignment due dates. And just as we are trained to do, when the pattern becomes irregular, spontaneous, and sporadic, we ask why did that happen and where/when/how did it occur. Like many of you, my comfortable classroom patterns were challenged over the last three years…HARD. Those irregular patterns taught me how to be more flexible in my classroom than I ever knew possible. Sometimes, greater flexibility yielded diminishing returns that left me disappointed in myself and/or with my students. But, through the trials and errors, I keep learning – it’s an exhausting continual process, but a process that has me sucked in. I’m addicted to the process.

Covid left my class calendars messy and I’ve been holding on to too many unnecessary lessons that I know were engaging, but are no longer aligned to the new description.  And so, the school year ahead is going to come with a post-Covid audit of my lessons that focus on our course skills. These provide a foundation for the course and are well written.

My process will involve looking at my class calendar and tagging every activity, lecture, assignment, and lesson to a course skill – likely multiple. If I can’t do it, the lesson needs to go (or be changed). I haven’t decided yet whether the course skills are something that I actually print and give to students, or if they become part of my everyday classroom vernacular. Maybe you all have suggestions for me. But I want to be more purposeful in the creation of my lessons, and more mindful of the materials I curate. I can always do better.

What is most beautiful about Human Geography are the endless ways to teach it through the lenses of personal experience, our local communities, our student’s eyes, and through the world at large. There are an infinite number of variables that impact our classroom patterns and processes. Make no mistake, what we do is nothing short of art. Finding out what works well or ends in tragic failure is part of creating our masterpiece – we will see how I fare with my planned audit starting in the Fall. In the meantime, margaritas and sidewalk chalk beckon me.

✌🏽

H.I.