The End of The Year Craze!
Back in August, if you had told me that by the end of the year, I would be the teacher that I am now I don't know that I would believe you. I am confident, I am comfortable, and I am tired! I have learned so much since August about myself and about this job that I am putting into my life as my career. Sometimes throughout the year it really felt like trial by fire, but now I know that next year I will have the tools under my belt to make progressive changes and keep learning better ways to teach.
I have already started to look ahead to next year. I decided back towards the beginning of this year that I wanted to keep a running record of everything that we did this year, how I felt about it, and how I could improve on it next year. If you know me, I LOVE BINDERS! That is where my ideas took place! I created two binders to represent my two preps (Pre-Algebra and Algebra). For each lesson, I would print out the answer key and put it into my binder. I used sticky notes to write out my thoughts on each lesson and how I would improve it the next year. Some of the time the improvements that I wanted really came from the fact that I needed to spend more time laying out the lessons and mapping their CFA's in a different order. Lesson planning was for sure a learning curve for me this year! Some of the notes were about the fact that I needed to slow down and explain concepts that the students should have already known but didn't.
For example, next year when we hit the back-to-school remediation I now know that we need to spend a day or so just going over a review on graphing. By the 8th grade, they should have graphing down but that is not always the case with some students. I still have students who struggle to remember (X, Y) and that the X value is graphed first, and so on. Each student is different and part of my plan for next year is remembering to take those different learning experiences into account to ensure that I am doing my best job.
I am excited to continue to work on all of this during the summer when I have the time to sit down and look at everything. I plan to map out at least the first two months or so before August rolls around!
We have 12 school days left as of right now and until then I plan to soak it all up as I finish out my very first year! 💙👩🏻🏫
