5 Key Tips for New Bluebonnet Teachers
A new curriculum can be so daunting. Changes in routine, expectations, figuring out how it aligns to how you’re rated…it’s always A LOT whenever it happens. (Especially when you feel things were already great and they’re making you change anyway!) The hot new thing (not really new - more like a rebrand) in Texas is Bluebonnet Learning. With grants in place for districts who implement, it’s not likely going away - so here are my five top tips to help you thrive.
**Take what you need from the opinions below - they’re based on my personal experience with years of implementation, but I’m not personally affiliated with the Texas Education Agency or the curriculum.
TIP 1: Those time stamps are so ambitious they should run for office. Treat them like a suggestion and script yourself a reply if someone questions it.
Have you found yourself becoming besties with the timer? Is timekeeper the most important student job in your class? Does your timer often beep in the middle of a lesson component? Perhaps your timer has met its tragic end after being thrown too many times?
I see the time stamps as a guide and not law. Depending on the day’s specific activities, I adjust to provide time where it’s most highly leveraged. Will your admin question this? Maybe, or if your district has a grant to implement, then probably. But data doesn’t lie, my friend. My party line is always “I adjust delivery to meet the needs of my students.” Write yourself a go-to sentence and let that be your reply if asked why something took two minutes instead of three, or five instead of four.
TIP 2: That novella labeled “concept development” is a vignette, not a script.
Do you feel like you’re in a middle school play rehearsal when you try to deliver a lesson using the questions from the teacher edition? Like you haven’t been trained in improv but here you are, performing, and the hecklers aren’t giving you any grace?
The concept development is supposed to be a window into a best-case-scenario lesson delivery…which is at times unrealistic. This is why that buzzword “internalization” is so important – because when you have deep content knowledge, you build your own script to adjust for your style and students’ needs. You anticipate pain points, plan around them, and adjust in-the-moment more easily because you’re the expert.
So while I don’t personally encourage use of the vignette verbatim, I also know that you need your own sort of script. You need to know what you’ll ask, how you’ll ask it, and why - the vignette offers a peek at what strategic questioning can be, but you need to decide for yourself what to use and how.
TIP 3: Each lesson component exists for a reason, so look for alternatives to skipping things.
This is the part you might not want to hear – I’m not an advocate for cutting out entire sections of the lesson. Adapting and modifying? Absolutely. But removing something with its own section in the Teacher Edition? Unless I’ve got a solid, data-driven reason I can give an administrator, I’m hitting all the sections every day. It’s the how that gets adjusted.
How much of each part you use is something that depends on students you’re working with. Group counting can be a time suck - I do it while we transition between activities, or in a small group with the ones who actually need it. Many times, fluency activities list additional examples you could use if you need to extend the practice, but sometimes only a few examples makes it clear that kids get the pattern and are ready to move on. Even the number of problems from the concept development may need modification, especially in terms of alignment with the exit ticket. Debrief? Maybe you have a more authentic, in-the-moment approach to delivery.
TIP 4: You need to do the work yourself, like you’re one of your students. Yes, really.
This is likely the point where you start to think, hey lady, why are you suggesting so much work? I started reading this because I’m already putting too much time into this internalization thing.
Think of future you, teaching Bluebonnet a second year, with all of this stuff already done and ready to go, with a few notes you left yourself about what worked and what didn’t. Second-year you is gonna be so grateful that first-year you sucked it up and took care of business. I know because second-year me was like heck yeah this is a comparative breeze.
It’s such a flex to be able to say to a kid that you did the problems too – what can they complain about, then, if you’re willing to put in the work as well? (It turns out, still a lot, but not that!)
I know exactly which problems are likely to cause misconceptions, because I noted that while I worked. I select must do/may do problems for the problem set based on alignment with the exit ticket, which I complete before doing any other work for a lesson. And all of this makes choices regarding the lesson’s other components much more streamlined.
TIP 5: Find a community to build you up - because planning together leads to teaching better.
When the curriculum doesn’t work as-is, that shouldn’t mean more work for you. Yet here you are, nearly to the end of this blog post and probably reading it on your own time. You’re not TEA’s unpaid intern, and bottling up all the frustration from implementation isn’t going to solve any problems. Yeah, it feels good in the moment to just vent and maybe curse a little - but without saying “Okay, now what will I do about it?” it just ends up feeling like an energy drain instead of a recharge.
This is where Math Mentor Club makes a huge difference. Sometimes you need advice, support, and encouragement from a community that can help you be more objective with all these curriculum mandates. There’s definitely such a thing as being too close to a situation - and that can interfere with your ability to be solutions-oriented. Here in the Club, we’re all trying to figure this thing out - and paying it forward is important.
Planning together, teaching better - it’s our motto for a reason. We’re not in the business of pretending perfection - we acknowledge our growth areas and actively work to improve our craft.
If you’re interested, fill out the form below and let’s talk more!
