#NoOfficeDay Reflections, Take Aways, and Questions...

Reading through David Truss's Blog, I came across a wonderful post alluding to his venture into a #noofficeday.  This along with other lively discussions as well as entertaining creative discussions alluding to classroom observations made me decide it was time to try it for myself.   

I do spend the better half of most days in classrooms, but with over 35 classrooms most of the days I simply get a "snapshot" of each room.  Even on this day, although I did get to many of the classrooms, I did not make it to each one.  This was fine though, my key rationale for the day was to "GET INVOLVED" and to "SEE WHAT A DAY IS LIKE IN OUR CLASSROOMS."

My key reflective question I had going into the day was:

Are our students truly engaged?  Are they active in their learning process?  Do they truly UNDERSTAND the material?

When I first arrived at St. Annies 4 years ago, I saw a building full of incredibly bright students.  They were fantastic "traditional" students who could take knowledge that they were taught, study it, digest it, and then regurgitate it when asked.

HOWEVER, when we began to focus more on critical thinking and the WHY? behind everything, I saw students hesitate and all of a sudden become deer in headlights...

What I saw during my #noofficeday was progress... Our students are more engaged, they are not performing mundane tasks, they are becoming LEARNERS... 

So it was good to see progress in these areas, is there still room for improvement?  Obviously...  We are not there yet, but we are moving in the right direction. because if you are not moving forward, then you are moving backward...