Even though I’ve been in the classroom in person or virtually every year since 1999,  I’m back to being new again, hopefully for the last time. This means I have not had any time to do be as reflective about my pedagogy as I had hoped.

In a nutshell, I am in love with my new school. It has a good balance between autonomy in the classroom and a supportive process for teacher evaluation. Being new means I’m swamped though, creating everything from scratch.

I am lucky. I have had some amazing colleagues who have shared a plethora of resources with me, and I realize I’m not entirely new. I have taught some of what I am teaching, I know *how* to teach, and I know where to look for resources. So I realize I am way ahead of the average first year teacher. To date, I’ve only made one rookie mistake, and I turned myself in for it on our board.

OK so enough on why I haven’t blogged. I’m blogging. And the best tool of this fall for me was the integration by Pear Deck of Google Slides. If you subscribe and haven’t used this add-on, you are missing out. I love that my slides can be pretty, be me, and still help with formative assessment. It’s so easy to collaborate with colleagues, and teachers can use created content as a Google Slide or with Pear Deck. It is EASILY my favorite new tech tool of 2017 and the one I used most regularly.

With Shakespeare, I flip the classroom a bit, and I am trying to do more of the reading of the play in class. With Pear Deck, I can hold discussions online and let the slides serve as a note-taking tool, and if we don’t finish a class discussion, slides can become homework and a platform to start a virtual discussion. I’m counting on it being key if we get any snow, too, so I have a way to share content for discussion.