One of the ways I try to keep my teaching fresh is to revise units and try new things. I am not one of those teachers who can do the same thing year after year. While I understand the pandemic has been a huge challenge, some of the units I teach didn’t feel successful last year, even on top of pandemic concerns. I discovered the unit makeover challenge through Brave New Teaching. The unit I started with is my Home and Family unit with the novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi at the center. I decided to revise that unit because I love that book so much that I actually over-teach it to the point that it’s a slog for the students by the end. If you know the book, it might make sense to explain that they generally stay with me up until the chapters on Akua and Willie, after which, they just can’t do it anymore. I knew I needed to freshen this unit up, and I decided this unit challenge would help. I enjoyed the first step, creating a vision board, so much that I’ve decided to tackle my other units in the same way. Here is an image of my vision board for Homegoing. I created this vision board using a Google Slide. Unfortunately, my school’s Google Drive settings no longer allow me to share outside the organization, so I cannot share the actual Google Slide.

I was not only happy with how it turned out but also was able to zero in on what I think is important in the novel. I have just started the vision board for the unit that includes Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours, and I can already tell that this unit really needs a lot of work. The essential questions I’ve been using don’t work, for one. I’m excited to tackle revising that unit along with my AP Lit teaching colleague.

I created the following vision board for the LGBTQIA+ history and literature unit in the Social Justice course I co-teach.

Again, I found it helped me focus and figure out what was important. The vision board concept has opened up a whole new way for me to think about units. I could also see it being a form of assessment for students following a unit. What if we asked students to create a vision board exploring their learning takeaways from the unit?