Many Emotions!

Wow.  I know postings have been sporadic. I created this blog to post about my thoughts about being a teacher, originally thinking I will be posting regularly.  Life gets in the way sometimes and it gets placed on the back burner. I'm a mom to two lovely girls, one is 7 and the other is 3.  I am married to a wonderful husband who listens to my rants, worries and joys on my career. This past school year a lot has occurred, the major one is my father passing right after Christmas. With these events and unscheduled changes, I believe it diminished my ability to be an effective teacher.  Now this is REAL TALK! In my head a voice is telling me not to post this, only post the good stuff and what you do well.  I am human.  I'm not going to be perfect.  This leads to the title of my post Many Emotions!

I am excited to be going back to work for the 2019-2020 school year! I'm also feeling nervous and a bit worried. This will be my 12th year at Lake Taylor High School in the History/Social Science Department. No I do not know what I'm teaching yet but that doesn't stop me from planning.  I'm hoping to find out by the end of the week.  This year my goal will be to improve student engagement in the classroom which will be reflective on assessment scores.

In my pursuit of planning I first reflected upon the past year on the good, the bad, and the eh.  My scores from state testing was not spectacular and not where I wanted it to be.  I did however help several seniors out to review for their test and graduate.  One girl in particular came to me crying and thanking me for assisting her.  I never taught her directly but I was happy to see her achieve and graduate.  I seem to second guess myself on decisions, which of course is not great if I want to some day move up in position.  Relationships with students, staff and parents were good this year.  I know I want to stay in better contact with parents (many teachers I believe would like that).

Planning for this year will be a bit different from last year.  I'm not going to wait until the night or two nights before a lesson to plan.  Only reason I did that last year was due to the fact the administration gave us permission to upload our lessons right before teaching the lesson.  NOT A GOOD IDEA for a teacher. In a discussion with my administrator, I told her that I wanted to plan my lessons from scratch.  This will be good for me and my students because I would not just be pulling from old files.  I would take the content which I know and make it engaging and empower my students.  Many a lesson was not directed that way they were of the direct instruction/lecture approach.  Content doesn't seem to be a problem for me, but how I deliver the content can be improved upon.

I love using technology in my class and my students really liked it.  We used Google Classroom, Quizizz, Kahoot, and Remind. I also used YouTube to show snippets of movies and discussions.  Its ok for a beginning.  During the spring semester, the instructional technology specialist at school gave us the opportunity to do a self-paced professional development with Kasey Bell's book Shake Up Learning. I wished I read it sooner rather than later.  If you have not read her book and you are using technology in your classroom, you need to read it. I will probably do a post later once I start using the ideas she shared in her book. Through teacher recommendations I am going to try and implement Flipgrid in my classroom to increase engagement and give my students a voice in their learning.  To help with organization of everything I'm using, I am creating a webpage with Google Sites to give to my students and parents.  Not only will this site be used as a central assess to the different apps students would use in class, it will also keep parents up to do date with what is going on.

I also want to continue building on my relationships with students.  Better relationships the better the students will succeed.  I had some difficult classes last year.  My students deserve a teacher who is all in and wants to teach them not only want is prescribed in the curriculum but also someone who is interested in them.  I read during exam week a book by Baruti K. Kafele, Closing the Attitude Gap: How to Fire Up Your Students to Strive for Success. Attitude is everything! I want to continue building those relationships with my students.  I am currently reading Christopher Emdin's For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too. I'm about half way done and can feel myself becoming excited to try new strategies to connect with my students.

I want to grow as an educator.  To move out of my comfort zone and try new things.  I want to empower students and watch them succeed.  What I laid out is not a step by step plan, but ideas I have learned.  Life will get in the way, but here is hoping that I will not be deterred from my goals for this school year.