New Beginnings

I can't help but feel like August, for me, must be like January for other people. While I'm always sad to see my lazy days of summer come to an end, there is nothing quite like the beginning of the school year. Every August gives me the opportunity to do the same job in a totally different way than I did last year. I guess that's why I love teaching so much. Even though I will once again be a 4th grade math and science teacher, my two new groups of students assure me that this year will be completely different from the previous ones.

Last year was one of the best years in my 21 years of teaching, and I know that is because of two things:

• how I started my year
• the hybrid rotational model

My classroom worked so well for all of us because we spent the time at the beginning of the year to really establish routines and build a culture in our classroom. You can read about how I ran my first few weeks (yes, even though when I typed the original post it was about the first week, it ended up being a little over three) here. Being able to spiral back to routines we established gave me so much additional instructional time throughout the year. And the hybrid rotational model? While I was skeptical about only teaching for 20 minutes to each group, the connections I made with every single student and the quality of those 20 minutes allowed me to complete far more than I have ever done before with both of my classes. 

For the first time ever, I'm not getting ready for a new school year thinking, "How do I want to do things differently this year?" This year I'm thinking, "How can I make things better?"

I'll be honest, I'm not sure yet, and that's okay. I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of great videos during this summer's Ditch Summit focusing on teacher wellness. Today, the idea that struck me the most was the idea of picking just a couple of things and being really, really good at them. I think I did this last year by only focusing on my beginning of the year lessons and implementing my new instructional model. I'm going to really think about my goals for this year and come up with two or three new things that I want to try. Then I'll tell you about them here.

And that's one personal goal I have. My blogging as been.... sporadic to say the least these last few years. Also during today's Ditch video, I realized my lack of posting was probably because I felt like people weren't really interested in what I had to say. But it has been really amazing for me to go back and revisit these moments. Because of that, I'm setting a goal to write once a week to share things that are going well and not so well. Hopefully I can look back on the entries and see how I can make things even better next year, and if somebody else finds something they can use, too, then that will be just an added bonus.