Teacher Magazine has just published an article I wrote titled The Last Day Of Class.
In order to view the whole article, you have to register for the Education Week site. It’s free, though, and only takes less than a minute. You’ll see where it says “Free Registration” just below the beginning portion of the article that you can see.
In the article, I share a few of the ideas shared by readers of this blog in my previous post “What Do You Do On The Last Day of Class?”. I also share some of my own and frame them in a bit of a community organizing context.
The Teacher Magazine article is part of a series written by members of the Teachers Leaders Network.
I’ll also be compiling all of the suggestions made by this blog’s readers into a post sometime in the future as part of my monthly What Do You Do? series.
It would be great if people could leave comments over at the magazine.
And, speaking of recent articles I’ve written, yesterday I posted about another one titled Parent Involvement Or Parent Engagement?, that was just published by Public School Insights. Unfortunately, their site is having problems today and is off-line. I assume it should be fixed quickly, and I’ll post when its available again. You might also want to check it tomorrow.
That article is a good introduction to the book I’ve written (with Lorie Hammond) that will be published by Linworth Publishing this summer. It’s called Building Parent Engagement In Schools.
I agree with you that it is important to give students time to evaluate your class and you as a teacher. I begin the year with a survey about students’ expectations and I end it with a survey on experiences. Surveys provide me with an honest reflection from the most important people in my career – my students.
The other thing I do during the last few days is pass around my “yearbook”. As students share and write in one another’s yearbooks, I pass around a small spiral bound journal in which students can choose to leave me a note. After teaching for 8 years, I have a collection of irreplaceable, memory-invoking notes from many of my students. It is a pleasure to read and really allows me to look back and put my career in perspective.