Summers Gone By

Some teachers look forward to summer, every summer I look forward to summer school.

Teaching summer school was the very first gig I had out of college. Working in the district where I completed my student teaching, I started as a long term sub for first session then became a teacher for their second session. A friend from college thoughtfully designed the course to focus on skills. The students worked towards mastery, with a constant spiraling back to foundation skills on assessments.  We focused on relationships, and made sure that while they were required to come every day that every day was a day they wanted to be there.

Fast forward to year two... Now at a new school (new district) I taught Algebra 1 and then again at a different high school across town. This was the last summer I settled with using printed curriculum documents and taught without a true online resource. I had been introduced to Classcraft this year and had some experience playing with my students during the regular year. Now was a great time to start the journey together with a fresh group of students.

My department chair introduced me to a new resource at the end of year 2 (before summer 3) called SAS Curriculum Pathways. There was near perfect alignment with our regular curriculum. It provided students with the opportunity to get feedback while pursuing mastery at their pace. I was so impressed with teaching with online assistance. When students know that they are getting it, they have confidence to continue forward. When they know that they aren't, they know it's a good time to ask for help and that is where I had an invitation in to teach them.

Side Note: Our district had not adopted a resource/textbook in many years as they made the conscious decision that the textbook is not the curriculum, and standards must come first.

The flexibility of learning this way allowed us to enjoy our time together, some students worked ahead, others dragged behind the suggested deadlines. Memories were made and students kept morale high by taking occasional breaks to play games together. The way we learned about our classroom community and each other through gaming taught the soft skills that many of the students needed.

Whether through gamification (Classcraft) or through games the secret to a positive classroom (summer school) experience is to make it about learning and fun too!