Brand New Year, 365 Chances to Make it Great!

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It's New Year's Eve, and time to contemplate 2017 and consider 2018.

If you are given to resolutions, perhaps you are starting a great new diet tomorrow (or in a couple of days).  Perhaps you are adding a new workout routine to your life.  Maybe you are taking up a hobby or giving up a bad habit.

As a teacher, I feel prone to consider my own life as well as my life in the classroom.  Maybe you are having similar thoughts.

We have 365 chances to make this year great.  We have around 90 days to make the rest of this school year great.  Not tonight, or even tomorrow, but before you head back to class make a list of things you'd like to improve.

Mine looks like this:

  1.  I want to do less grading and planning at home and more at school.  I plan to do this by using my time at the carpool to be more effective.
  2. I want to make an individual plan of improvement for each student and with each student.  I plan to do that during spirit week when the schedule is already messed up.
  3. I want to use games to help improve the direction following skills of my students.  I plan to give an intervention block to this pursuit.
  4. I want to read aloud to my students every day with the purpose being enjoyment and with the by-product being enhanced comprehension.  (I started this before Christmas as an experiment and now I will implement it daily.

So,what about you?  What do you plan to do?  I want to keep my list to four.  When I get these done, I will move to the next four.  I feel like four is doable.

Then, I want to have a goal to ignore data as a primary measurement of my success.  I want to use the individual plan of improvement as my main measurement of class progress.  (Of course, I have to use data where my school requires it, but it will not be my true measurement.)

I wish you each a Happy New Year!


First published 1/1/18

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