Well goodbye summer and hello to the 2026/2027 school year! So starting this blog or at least trying to (he he). I am excited for this upcoming school year. I teach in the Houston area and there are some really exciting things happening for teachers in my district. For one we will have access to TIA (Teacher Incentive Allotment). What that means is that if you have awesome numbers for your Teacher Appraisal and you can show great growth for your students then you can get a little extra pay. This is huge and I am really hoping that I can bring myself and my team to the task. My main concerns are these:
- How do we align with our districts and state standards when our standards are so broad.
- What resources can we ensure to build and use to help us get to the mark.
- How can we keep the kids engaged with higher rigor content but also keep the class fun and enjoyable.
So if anyone out there reads this and has some ideas I am all open! I am a little stresed about it but I also see it as a huge opportunity. I am currently a single dad of three and having an extra $10,000 dollars in the bank would be huge. So I guess we will see how that goes.
This school year I am also anticipating that we will need to become much more visual to our community due to declining student enrollment in public schools. This last year Texas saw a 75,000 reduction in student enrollment across the state and those numbers are expected to double this year. I think that as a program we will need to do a much better job at showing what we are doing by establishing more social media presence and showcasing what we are doing. I am not super excited about that because its more work. Don’t get me wrong I plan to let you guys know what I got going on here from a more professional stand point. I do think that public schools in general are going to have to raise up in self promotion and ensuring student outcomes. Luckily in Aquatic Science we have build a rather robust curriculum and have had years of success with our students. We may just need to bump it up a notch.
My classroom is pretty much ready for students but I got some really exciting plans moving ahead this year. Here are my big three projects that I am so excited for:
For one we will be getting some baby alligators through Crocs in the Classroom . Crocs in the Classroom is a program that is ran by Crocodile Encounters in Angleton, Texas. They are a small zoo dedicated to housing alligators and crocodiles. Crocs in the Classroom basically gives teachers access to baby crocodiles for the school year. I am hoping to get 4 crocs for my room. During the year you agree to feed them and keep them healthy with heat lamps and proper aquarium space. Then at the end of the school year the teacher returns to crocs to Angleton and the Crocs are then turned into boots (Just Kidding!). They are actually then sourced to various university’s and colleges for further study and research.
As a part of the Texas A&M Ag Extension Plan it Marsh and Plan it Dues is a program that works with the Galvaston Bay and other various organizations to help restore various wetland and costal dunes by providing schools with growing trays and various dune grasses. The program is headed by Stacy Hines and she is a wonderful person to work with. In the program you are given some training about the project and are also given some lessons that need to be incorporated with your teaching to help students better understand the importance of dunes and prairie grasses and their impact on ecology in those ecosystems. This year we are going to try to grow seeds in the aquariums for the first semester. I am hoping that the aquarium lighting will be enough to help the seeds to grow and also give our students some good hands on learning. We hopefully will have access to a greenhouse which will help us to further help support this amazing program. If you teach near the gulf coast I would strongly encourage you to check it out! https://ccag.tamu.edu/extension/rangeland-habitat-management/plan-it-marsh-and-plan-it-dunes/
I know what you are thinking. There are trout in Texas? I honestly never imagined in a million years that trout could be found in Texas but in Austin there is a portion of the Guadalupe River that is heavily charged with nice cold spring water. And that is where the trout go. This program will not start up for us until January, but in a nutshell Trout in the Classroom will supply us with chillers and any other equipment we need to help raise Trout Fry from January until May. Then either we will or a volunteer from the Texas Fly Fishers of Houston will then take the fry and introduce them into the Guadalupe River for anglers to enjoy. I am so excited for this one because I grew up catching and enjoying Trout.
Aside from those big projects I am excited to move some of my fish around a little bit and to try some new things with some of the new equipment and tank set ups we got. My aquatic’s team was also very much dismantled and from 4 teachers last year they only kept two of us on board with the course. I’m not too worried about new teachers but there is always the adjustment phase that occurs with new teachers and with our program I always get a little worried about if they are going to be able to handle the aquarium logistics. But I don’t need to worry about that it hasn’t happened yet ha ha.
Let me know how you guys are feeling about this upcoming school year. Any thing exciting or stressing? What are your hopes for a new year? What are your fears?
Ripplebound 