It's difficult to find time to meet with a partner, especially a partner in a different discipline. I have had grad school, illness, family obligations, professional obligations and home life. He is the Social Studies department head, the President of our Educators' Association, a devoted dad and a great teacher.
In addition, I felt a bit like I was imposing. Now don't get me wrong, Chris wants to work with me, but all of the work I am doing is for my grad school class, not his. I do not like to burden him with additional work when he has so much on his plate already.
We finally were able to carve out some time to talk about our upcoming unit. Chris and I are very excited to work together. We hope to come together for a few more units during the next school year. The basis of our discussion was about Stage 1 and Stage 2. We talked about essential questions and how to frame the unit.
One of the most debated topics was that of "coverage." In our UbD book, the authors really seem to emphasize that we should not get hung up on coverage But Chris still feels that it is vitally important. Therefore, we talked about coverage and uncovering for quite a bit. I do not think that I changed his mind, but I at least gave him something to think about. He feels the pressure form our district to "get through" all the material. It's hard, I think, especially for a Social Studies teacher, to break away from this mentality. It's hard for me too! We shared these frustrations with each other.
I was able to share the student sample that I had worked on and Chris was impressed. I really want him to be involved in grading the sample I will need his historical expertise. He was very willing to help me grade and to give the students feedback about the historical applications.
We have another meeting planned in which we are going to talk about Stage 3. Here's hoping that it will go as well as our first discussion did!
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