3 Tips for a Successful Decisive Element Challenge
You’re taking an important step to prioritize your professional development by participating in The Decisive Element Challenge (TDEC). But improvement won’t just happen on it’s own.
Here are three tips to get you prepared to make the most out of the Challenge:
1) Commit
Your professional improvement is not something that happens to you. And neither is TDEC. It is an active process that you must be committed to.
If you’re expecting to sit in this week’s PD session and passively absorb new skills, you’re fundamentally misunderstanding how this profession works. If you’re waiting for a group of kids who will be “better” next year, you’re ignoring your role in your students’ learning.
Growing as a teacher doesn’t work this way. It requires you to put a lot of focused effort in to reap the benefits of that hard work.
Commit to this process.
Commit to truly reflecting every day during the Challenge. Commit to being active with your teammates, seeking them out for help and reaching out when you know they need it. Commit to becoming an active agent in improving your instructional practice.
You’ll get out what you put in.
2) Carve
I mean this in two figurative senses: carve out TIME and carve away DISTRACTIONS.
The actual mechanisms of TDEC are not at all time-intensive. A meager 5–10 minutes each day. Max. But if you consider it “something extra” to do in your already busy day, you won’t make it through week 2.
Carve out 5–10 minutes in your day to sit down, breathe, and think about your day in the classroom. I recommend that these 5–10 minutes be the last thing you do before you leave the school building, or maybe the 5–10 minutes right after your kids leave school for the day.
Carve away distractions while you do this. Erase the boards, make tomorrow’s copies, deliver that note to the main office, get all of the kids out of your classroom. You have many important things to do, but these little things are distractions from being truly mindful about your teaching practice. Clear your mind of them. Sit down, breathe, think. Without distraction.
I think you’ll be surprised at how many thoughts you have once you give yourself the time and space to think about them productively. And how great it feels to leave them in the school building so they don’t follow you home at night.
3) Contemplate
TDEC is less about how your classroom is and more about how it could be. You are in the driver’s seat here. There’s no rubric. There’s no evaluation system. There’s no judgment.
There’s just you. (And who better? You’re in your classroom 100% of the time!)
Contemplate what your classroom can be. The learning that can happen. The amazing things your students can do through your leadership. The impact you want your class to have on them.
At the end of the Challenge, if you’ve given yourself “greens” in everything, every day, for eight weeks, you’ve sold yourself short. You’re far more capable than you think you are — so contemplate a reality that far surpasses the present and I guarantee that you’re improvements will astound you!
Good luck with the Challenge!
This post originally appeared on The Decisive Element Challenge blog.
