Open House

There's just something about open house that leaves me both excited and trepidatious.  I'm always excited to make a positive home-school connection with my students' parents, but it's also far more nerve-wracking to speak to an entire room full of adults than it is to speak to rooms full of teenagers day in and day out.

It's not that I get tongue-tied, it's more a case of almost perpetual paranoia.  The thing with teaching is that there's always more to learn, there are always things that could be better, more effective, more engaging.  There's always more to learn, and teaching's necessarily an unfinished business as a result.

For example, I've been using a course website to collect digital resources, post my weekly syllabus, and blog with my students for four or five years.  And it's interesting, but every year I feel proud and excited about the new pages I've added or new content I've posted.  This year was no different.  But my pride is always coupled with worry: is it enough?  Will it work?  Will the students really use it?  What could I have done better?

These questions only redouble when I'm facing parents instead of students.  You see, I'm definitely confident about my ability to teach literature.  I've got four degrees.  I know my content, and I have a knack for helping students connect to that content.  What I'm not entirely confident about, though, is my ability to use technology effectively in the classroom.  I like to think that I do the best I can with what I have, but I'm not sure that's really true.  There's always more to learn.

I've really been working on the learning more thing, though, especially with regard to technology.  And I faced this year's open house with a smile on my face (that I hope hid the nausea in my belly) and with my website up on the LCD.  I showed parents the resources open to their students, the blogging they had already done, and I navigated through a number of the pages I had set up.

We only have 10 minutes with each group of parents, and I've found it best to keep talking for the whole 10 minutes.  I talked about the book we'll be reading this year, the scope and sequence, and I described the ways in which I hoped their students would embrace the class blogs and engage thoroughly and thoughtfully with each other.

The good news is that I survived open house.  In retrospect, it's never as bad as I fear it'll be.  The better news, however, is that one parent stuck around after.  She told me that she knew I had a course website (she's a teacher, too), but that she didn't know the extent to which I had developed it.  She was impressed.  She also said she was excited that her son would have the opportunity to engage with it.  Phew!  I mean, despite the fact that there's always more to learn, it's nice to get some reassurance every now and again that you're at least on the right track along the road to learn.