School Year Goals

Day 1: Write your goals for the school year. Be as specific or abstract as you’d like to be!


This school year is a fresh start for so many people in my life, including myself. For this reason, my main goal is qualitative, immeasurable, and not the typical SMART goal teachers are trained to foist onto students.

I will make every day a fresh start for everyone I can reach out to.

I will make every day a fresh start for these people and the others I meet along the way: myself, my forgiving parents, caring family, attention-seeking students, shy students, academically-inclined students, struggling students, and supportive friends.

Though the goal is immeasurable and likely insurmountable, there are specific steps to take to meet it and benefit those around me.

For myself, I will stay more organized and avoid disappointment and self criticism when I fail.

For my parents, I will pause and reflect before I speak out in reaction to what I might disagree about.

For my family, I will show them how much I care about them regularly.

For my attention-seeking students, I will provide individualized, intentional attention when they need it most and teach them how to temper their behavior.

For my shy students, I will provide opportunities to act on their strengths and interests.

For my academically-inclined students, I will teach them that failure is necessary.

For my struggling students, I will provide specialized extra support.

For my supportive friends, I will extend thoughtfulness and love without expectations for reciprocation.

This school year, I will invigorate my loved ones’ lives with the energy they give me. I will act on the extensive reading I did over the summer by considering its implications in my everyday practice. I will perfect my practice this year and make goals next year based on weaknesses. I will refine my practice by continuing my education and reading and thinking beyond course requirements.

I will use these blogging prompts to reflect. Thanks, @teachthought.

Also, I will refine my punctuation usage in personal and professional practice, more specifically my use of the exclamation mark. All of those things I say are certainly not exclamatory.

http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/reflective-teaching-30-day-blogging-challenge-teachers/

My Summer 2014 Reading List:

Classroom Management and Setup

I found this book and many of Kardamis’s blog posts through Pinterest posts on how to improve classroom practice. I decided to buy a copy of the book to reflect on my own practices after my first three treacherous, rewarding, exhausting years of teaching. What was I doing wrong? This helped me figure out the answer to that question. While I was sometimes off-put by the regular religious references and suggestions, I was able to take them in stride and most of the book’s suggestions to my benefit. Though I am not particularly religious myself, it was interesting to see how many classroom matters Kardamis left to faith or fate, whichever way you want to look at it. Even without a specific Christian angle, I agree that much of what you encounter in the public school is a matter of faith and belief in something bigger than you, your kids, and your school. This outlook has helped me decentralize many of the school-related problems I have.

My county gives all new teachers a copy of this informative volume at New Teacher Orientation and keeps all schools well-stocked with them. It was for this reason, I think, that I did not take it seriously. I was wrong. This book is almost necessary. I have heard many veteran teachers sing its praises and proudly claim they re-read it every summer. Read it. Find out why.

Contemporary Issues in Education Syllabus

I had only read selections of Dewey’s prior to this class. Even still, we only read 70% of the chapters presented. Although it’s dense, it’s worth looking into so that we can understand where our progressive education ideas start to come from.

A backlash against progressive education ideas, Educational Wastelands is told from the perspective of a jaded history professor who is disappointed with the lack of skills of incoming college freshmen. Sound familiar? Years later, we still have not fixed this problem. Our class discussions seem to say that, similar to politics, too much of a balance between progressive and traditional educational ideas create a lot of muddled middle ground where few truly succeed.

My favorite selection from the course, Race Matters pulls no punches. Read it.

A refreshing look at how every major party in our great democratic society is in it for the money.

An alternative to the progressive multicultural ideas that are currently prominent. I disagree with most of it.

Freedom from oppression is achieved through quality education, which everyone deserves.