Hey, instructional routines, where are you?

This is my midyear wake up call.

At the beginning of the school year I developed some goals. They were ambitious, to say the least. It was around the start of December that I realized how unreasonable my expectations were for 2016-17. I’ve been in the game for a while, I should’ve known better. Shame on me.

Despite my lack of judgement and setting myself up for failure, three of my goals came with a higher priority for me. This post serves as a self-critique on my progress towards one of those three: my use of instructional routines.

I worked on these routines a lot last summer through New Visions (here and here) and at TMC16. I had a crazy vision that they would transform my teaching this year. They were going to help my students leverage mathematical structure like never before. Being routines, I was going to get better at using them as the year progressed. I was going to learn to lean on them.

Well, next week the first semester is coming to a close and my use of them has been pitiful. Sure, my first unit in algebra 2 held much promise. I used the routines five times over the course of a few weeks, which was a huge win in my book. I started off strong. Slowly, though, I got bogged down with the curriculum. I got consumed with more immediate concerns and stressors, like being at a new school, running around to three different classrooms during the day. In the meantime, I forgot all about the instructional routines that I so zealously committed myself to back in September. I’ve used Connecting Representations one time since that first unit. I haven’t used Contemplate then Calculate at all.

Accepting this isn’t easy because of how much I really wanted to use these routines. That said, I know that it’s normal to unintentionally forget about goals. But I also know that if I recognize the struggle, write about it, and let it breath, I can begin realigning myself to the vision I had back in September.

What’s great is that I’ll soon begin digging into Routines for Reasoning and have scheduled a workshop with New Visions, both of which should help me find the routines that I so desperately want to implement.

bp