This year I’m hitting a 15th year anniversary of being in the same role at the same school. Prior to this position, I taught high school mathematics for eight years. I actually taught almost every high school math course that there could be offered. When I made the transition to be becoming a Digital Learning Specialist, I saved every 3 inch binder full of materials, notes, and assessments for each class.
After 10 years, I slowly got rid of a few of those binders, but still managed to keep ten 3 inch binders. These binders consisted of two of my favorite courses, Algebra II Honors and Calculus. Algebra II Honors was that class that I just loved to teach. I love the content in it. I kept Calculus for a couple reasons – I appreciated the challenge that it gave me and in many instances, I had to spend hours upon hours upon hours, relearning calculus myself. I worked through and solved all of the problems that I was assigning my students. You just can’t wing it when teaching Calculus. As a result of this, the thought of just getting rid of that content due to the amount of hours I spent was very hard for me. Plus, there was always this idea in the back of my mind that well what if I do go back into the math classroom?
Seeing as though I’ve now hit year 15 of not teaching math, I think I can safely say I’m probably not gonna go back to the math classroom. But seeing these binders also made me think about how things have drastically changed over that time span. Everything that was done was done by paper and pencil/pen. Yes there was technology but it was not as easily accessible, especially in the world of mathematics. 15 years ago, not every teacher had their own laptop given to them. I can remember many of days where I was physically cutting paper and pasting those individually cut out problems and pasting them onto a sheet of paper to create an activity to be photocopied. All those hand written worksheets and activities that students received from me as well. That is mostly a thing in the past!
I also got to thinking that these binders are a physical representation of the hard work I spent into designing and running curriculum. Nowadays, all of that content is just hidden inside of our Google Drive in many different folders (or for some, not folders at all). I can only imagine how many folders that actually exist inside of my drive with the amount of files in each of those sub folders. Having things digitally just makes it a bit harder for us to actually visualize and understand the amount of work and dedication that’s been put into the curriculum that we teach each and every year. Seeing something physical makes it a lot easier to see the hard work and dedication.
I really did hate getting rid of these binders, but I have come to realize that
- the curriculum in the binders would not be taught the same way that it was taught 15 years ago
- I haven’t looked at it in 15 years and probably won’t ever again
- these physical binders are no different then the digital folders I created 13 years ago that I have not looked at
Yes it was hard to throw away, but also a sense of peace as well. I know that this is not a normal type of post that I share on my blog, but felt it was important to reflect.
And that is my spiel…
Craig M Sheil 