Filling in the Blanks
"I may not be the best at what I do, but I'm the only one who does it." This was my senior quote in my high school yearbook. I think I saw it on a t-shirt, and I thought it was funny and clever at the time. But little did I know, it would speak to my mindset as a teacher. I just finished my 23rd year as a classroom teacher. During my career, I've seen many things come and go (methods, standards, technologies), and I've given in to instructional peer pressure. But more often than not, I've chosen my own path and done what suits me and, more importantly my students, best. This past school year, something struck me. As the parent of an 11th grader in the same school that I teach in, and as I looked at my own students, I realized that they work almost exclusively with packets. Each subject, each unit, has a packet. And I'm not just talking about a few handouts; we're talking packets that can contain as many as 100 pages or more. That's