New Years Resolutions for All!

Welcome back to school! I found that I had a hard time writing 2009 on the board in the date today… time passes so quickly with my students. I hope you all had as enjoyable a break as I did and are recharged and ready to go for the next part of the school year. I was able to use some time during this break to reflect on my teaching practice, and I’ve come up with some “Teaching New Years Resolutions” that I intend to put into play in my classroom and in my personal professional development over the next several months. I’m also hoping that by making these public and posting them here, I won’t wimp out and break them!

When I set goals with my students, I try to keep them simple, measurable, and realistic but challenging. I also try to make sure we don’t focus on too many things at a time so we have a chance of getting through all that we have before moving on to even more ambitious goals. Finally, I of course set up a reward schedule: it helps my students stay motivated and allows me to reward their hard work. Since this model works so well in my classroom, I’ve decided to employ the same strategy for my own resolutions, and I am implementing this with my students in the same way.  Many teachers take advantage of this time of year to help guide and shape their students' directions, so please check out how other Scholastic teachers and bloggers are using New Years resolutions in their classrooms!

 

Resolution #1: Instructional Practice

We all know that our kids love interdisciplinary activities, like learning about history through the art or music of a period or learning how to write poetry by listening to rap artists’ work. We also all know that it can be very time-consuming to implement interdisciplinary units; between figuring out your objectives and how to assess them, coming up with tools and rubrics that work for your students, finding associated resources, and planning the lessons themselves, it’s definitely been tempting to me to “just say no!” and teach more traditional units. However, especially for my multimodal and special-needs learners, interdisciplinary units are a great way to differentiate instruction, allow for surreptitious alternative assessments, and generally engage my students. Therefore, I resolve to plan and implement at least three truly interdisciplinary lessons per month. I will definitely be keeping an eye on Carolyn Elwood and Rob Southworth’s blog on Strategies for Arts Integration as I pursue this avenue! My reward, if I successfully complete this resolution, will be to create an “arts gallery” with my students in June and invite parents in for its “opening gala!”

 

Resolution #2: Student Social and Emotional Development

Conflicts between students seem to be common in most classes, and my inclusion classroom is certainly no exception! Many of my students are particularly sensitive to teasing and are easily provoked, so helping them to establish and maintain a self-regulation system is critical to their academic success… I don’t want students to lose learning time fighting or being frustrated over a fight! I currently use Conflict Counselors (one of my class jobs) to help me resolve problems, but I’m finding that while that process works for more serious issues, my students still come up to me regularly and “tattle” on their peers. Since I like to use transition times for academic and important social activities, it can be a huge investment of time to listen to each student’s complaint and then attempt to solve it. However, I do need to be made aware of incidents, and I do want my students to know that I take them seriously. Therefore, I resolve to handle student conflicts more efficiently. I think I’ll try Angela Bunyi’s Incident Reports (she's our 3-5th grade Scholastic Teacher Advisor and has some awesome ideas in her blog!) solution and see how they work with my students.  If we can effectively reduce classroom conflicts, my students and I will celebrate with a “Peace Party” before spring break during which we will learn about Sadako and her Thousand Paper Cranes by reading Eleanor Coerr's book and make our own origami versions of Sadako's cranes.   

 

Resolution #3: Professional Development

This one is a toughie. I’m finding that as a fourth year teacher, I finally feel ready to explore learning theory, brain-based strategies, and other approaches to my classroom beyond the “stay above water” survival techniques I started out with. My classroom is overall running smoothly, and problems are generally handled, but now I want to do more. Therefore, I resolve to read AND HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH A PEER about at least one professional book or article per month.  I’m like my students: I know if I just read something on my own, I won’t be able to digest or internalize the material as thoroughly as I would if I talked to another teacher. That’s also a good reminder to me to keep the group work going. If I need it to be successful, chances are that many of my students do as well! If I am able to achieve this goal, I plan to treat myself to a new (not used, not library, not for my students!) book of my choice, either personal or professional.

 

Resolution #4: Work/Life Balance

I love my students, and I love to spend time with them. I love to see them successful, and I know that I need to work hard to help them achieve those successes. However, I also love my family and friends, and even though it’s getting better for me this year, I find that sometimes I expend so much energy on my kids that I don’t have much left for myself! While I don’t see it happening to me any time soon, I know that this ‘burnout’ thing people talk about is real, and I don’t WANT it to happen to me. That’s why I feel like I need to make sure to make time for ME and for my family and non-school friends. To help me do this, I resolve to stop trying to reinvent the wheel! I am fortunate to have brilliant colleagues and an amazing support network, both at my school and at Scholastic.com. If I can just let go a tiny bit and trust the incredible work these people are doing, I’m sure it will pay off for me personally in feeling more balanced, and for my students in having a calm, happy teacher who is happy to spend time with them! I also think it will be interesting to push myself in a different direction, and I look forward to adapting other teachers’ great ideas for my students with special needs. These will both be their own reward, and I look forward to reaping their benefits.

 

I hope that being clear about my expectations for myself will help me to stick to my goals, and my students and I are in the process of reaffirming our expectations of each other during class. Check back later for an idea of how to beat those back-to-school management blues and introduce children to the inauguration of President Barack Obama at the same time! What are some of your New Years Resolutions? Please post and share your ideas!