I’ve been teaching for a bit now, and I’ve never had as much fun, felt as successful, or watched students grow as rapidly as I have this year. Despite this being the first year coming out of last spring when I finally let admin know just how intense the burnout was and in no uncertain terms that if there weren’t changes made to my assignment, this would likely be my last.

But how did we get here?

Quarantine came, and I was so excited. I thought we’d finally be forced to grapple with systemic injustices and make substantive change. Then, we went back to the classroom, and immediately swung not just back to where we were but further with endless testing to make up for that ever-tossed about phrase–learning loss.

Throughout distance learning and the immediate return, I was my most responsive. I constantly checked with students in terms of how they were doing and what they needed and pivoted on the fly as I never had before. I built lessons around what they were showing me (e.g. a unit for my middle school newcomers based on Marc Brakett’s Permission to Feel–which I cannot recommend highly enough if you have yet to read) and kept the myriad tech issues and absences front and center of my design, making sure activities would make sense regardless of if a student missed the last class, joined late, got kicked off in the middle, had a working camera and/or mic, or could only participate in the chat.

My first year or two back, I kept this mindset front and center. I asked students constantly what they wanted to work on and if things felt fair. I elicited their input and adjusted accordingly.

Then, I found myself in the PLC trap where we wanted everything to be the same so that it was equitable across the site. Same assessments, same activities, same slides, same pace. So I marched through activity by activity timing each precisely–ever fixated on that perfectly placed summative assessment.

And, over time, I lost sight of my students as I prioritized our curriculum. I wasn’t looking for their needs. I wasn’t adjusting accordingly–who has the time or capacity for that? I just marched through activities, lessons, units.

Mind you, I knew the students I taught were different. Each year, they came a unique set of missing foundational skills. Each year, they were chattier than the year before. But. The lessons were pre-decided. So none of that mattered.

Until. It did. And nothing else matter[ed] (cue Metallica).

Last year, I was gifted a book, and it changed everything. In her book Point-less, Sarah Zerwin gave me the permission to be the teacher I’d always longed to be but never felt I could.

I started the year having my freshmen read “The Case Against Grades” by Alfie Kohn the first ten minutes of the school year. They then prepared to discuss the implications of Kohn’s argument in a Socratic Seminar in their first hour of high school. This set the foundation.

We spoke of how slides and technology can allow us to overlook one another–our interests, our needs–and fixate what we need to do and rush to get it done.

We decided as a community, to prioritize creating a space for us to breathe and grow together as humans. Students have made the case to work in notebooks, without handouts but directions on the whiteboard.

Students are showing up. For themselves. For each other. They show me what their interests are. What their needs are. And together, we create each day.

First period is different from second period. As it always was and always should be. What’s changed is I’m no longer fighting trying to make them be the same.

Instead, I’m teaching like it’s 1999.