One of the best parts of teaching over a period of time is that you can find patterns. I enjoy data and like looking for patterns, themes, and connections. It is just how my brain tends to work. One theme that pops up often is this: I love projects, but dislike the time investment. This tends to come up around midwinter break, or whenever I embark on a project.
Therein is the struggle. Everyone wants their teaching to be engaging and interactive. I'm not sure of anyone that gets into the profession thinking otherwise. Often that leads you to some sort of outcome that isn't a worksheet, and is difficult to quantify or measure (but you do because it is called assessment and not fun time). The largest impediment for me is time. It is less the time to teach, but more the time to put the skills into practice and create a presentation or analytical essay. You also have the time on the back-end scoring work (seeing gaps in instruction).
We recently worked on our explorer projects. We developed a rubric for evaluating explorers, mined information, compared explorers leading to this "thing". Kids did a great job and really grappled with whether the explorer they chose was truly a great explorer. But getting there is a tedious process. Couple that with technology and a desire to add bells and whistles and you begin to stretch a 2 or 3 day project into 5-7 days. That is just the assembly part. The legwork beforehand is another few days since you're reading and categorizing information, determine important information etc.
As much as I love the work they do, I wrestle with time. Do another project or give it a rest? Some kids need a little more practice reading and responding instead of more free-form analysis. I want innovation yet know there are some content pieces I need to get to. Time, projects, and my inner struggle are my recurring themes. Judging by how I write about them, and when, this will continue for a while.
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