Two nights ago, I made the mistake of thinking about what I would do on Day 1 of the next school year just as I was lying down, and that was enough to keep me wide awake most of the night. The next day, in an attempt to calm my nerves, I pulled open a spreadsheet and started jotting down some of those floating ideas and to attempt to organize them, while staying away from the areas that could get me into trouble. (As in, I really don't have full control over what I will teach in Algebra 2, since there will be 4 of us teaching Algebra 2 at our school next year. Similarly, there will actually be 5 Geometry teachers next year, and we'll all have to agree on what to teach, which seems daunting to me.) Thus, I started my brainstorm with the bigger-picture things that I can fully control -- like how I plan to build a collaborative and reflective classroom culture, and ended with the more curricular things like which enduring concepts I would want my students to walk away with. Instead of focusing on each class individually and going into all the curricular details of that class, I tried to figure out which ideas or themes seem to flow through more than one class and are therefore the most important and transferable. I looked afterwards at both Kate's and Anna's lists of essential Algebra 2 understanding questions, just to make sure that I didn't leave out anything majorly important. (Thanks, gals, for the fabulous lists!) I decided not to separate the process goals from the content goals in the end, because realistically, each type of goal will require from me the same level of concrete steps and careful planning in order to implement it with gusto.
This is a work in progress, but now that I have a basic framework, I think the next step is to find and refine some rich tasks that I can use. I would love any resources you may have for me!
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