#reflectiveteaching

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Reflective Teaching Day 1 Day 1: Write your goals for the school year. Be as specific or abstract as you’d like to be! This is very late for me to be thinking about school - I can feel the nightmares coming already... - Be more organized and consistent as a teacher. To me this means, ensuring that my lessons have a clearly defined purpose and structure. That my classroom is intentionally and practically set up. That my students know what to expect of me and understand what I except of them. - Consistent application of classroom consequences. This is already proving to be a challenge for me, even in the fourth week of school. I am a happy teacher when I don't have to issue consequences, but I am a much much happier teacher when my students are able to learn and I am able to teach, even if that involves issuing consequences. I really need to remember that this week. @ - Backwards planning and knowing where we're going and why. We're using the Engage NY materials for ELA this year, so technically this is already thought out, but there is also a lot of room for supplementing and adapting as necessary. - Following though with plans. I tend to set lofty goals or adopt a lot of new ideas/programs, but fail to stick with them all. This year, I'm trying to choose just a few and use them through the end of the year.

1. Better hooks and transitions on a day-to-day basis. 2. Substantially improve the quality of our photography in the yearbook. 3. Plan and execute four faculty social events. 4. Grow as an English teacher.

Students who communicate passionately about a subject that means something to them.

Hmm, my teacher evaluations mainly come from students, and they’re usually pretty high. My main concern, I think, is making sure that the required text (the one I make them pay for) is both useful and used consistently, and thoroughly. I try to gear everything we do toward being actually useful in, say, real life, but the textbook seems to be a place that gets limited and feels more artificial. Textbook selection can be really difficult, but selecting all your own texts and organizing things that way has its own drawbacks, too - mostly time-related, but of course there are copyright concerns, too.

I think it would be cool to do some online tutoring for the Multiliteracies Center - it’s something Abraham wants to introduce this year, so students can get coaching right from wherever they are without having to come into a building that most of them don’t usually enter. I suspect most of those assignments will go to experiences coaches, but who knows? I think it would be interesting to work online instead of face to face, which is how I’m used to doing meetings with students. It could be more helpful, or it might point out why those in-person meetings are so important.