Back to School Goals

It is that time of year again! The students will be arriving next Tuesday and the teachers are busy assembling their classrooms. The last few weeks have been a little crazy and I must admit I have been ignoring my blog a little. Thank goodness for the link-up at I {heart} Recess.

Personal: This goal is a double whammy. My husband and I have been running this summer and my cardio has gotten way better. I definitely don't want to lose that progress now that school is back in session so keeping up with exercise is key. The other part of the goal is to try and keep a balance between school and the other aspects of life. I tend to get slightly majorly focused on work and ignore having a social life or keeping up with stuff at home. This year I really want to get better at keeping things balanced by working less.

Organization: I have spent a lot of time this summer getting my classroom cleaned up and organized. Now the trick is for me to keep it that way and make sure I stay in the habit of putting everything in its place. Part of that is keeping up with my marking. The faster I can get things marked, entered in to my marks book, and handed back to students the less paperwork gets piled up in various places in the classroom.

Planning: Our district has a central printing office that takes care of all the teacher's printing. The challenge is they need 72 hours to get everything back to you. My goal this year is to stay on top of planning so I don't get caught unprepared in terms of photocopying.

Professional: Last year I got the chance to attend a conference on differentiation and I am still trying to figure out how to best implement all the strategies I learned. This year I want to continue building on what I know and practice more strategies for differentiating. One of my big plans for doing this is introducing math rotations (thanks to 3rd Grade Thoughts for getting me started) to help meet each student where they are at with my math instruction.

Students: I love the book "Mindset" by Carol Dweck and her take on learning. She has the attitude that every person is good at learning and every person can improve themselves in multiple areas by applying themselves. This is such a great attitude to try and pass on to kids - if something is difficult that means you are growing your brain and learning.

Motto: As a Christian school teacher I love this verse from Proverbs 22. It reminds me there is more to school and teaching than covering curriculum; it is my job to try and instill in students skills and attitudes that will enable them to be life-long learners and continue to grow beyond their years in school.

Summer Time

Wow! I can't believe that summer break is almost over. One more week until teachers go back to school and only two more weeks until the kiddos arrive! It has definitely been a busy summer filled with beautiful weather, tons of weddings and good family time.

 Looking back I also realized how much time I spent at school this summer. I know, I know this is the point where people tell me I'm nuts and that I should just enjoy the summer but I found using summer to accomplish some big classroom tasks to be quite worthwhile.

I started the summer by culling and organizing old resources that had been left in my classroom by previous teachers. It is amazing how much stuff can be collected over time and how much of that stuff was left in cupboards for me to find. There were a few items I found to be useful but there was also a bunch of old resources that made their way into the recycling bin. It is hard to get rid of things but it's also so good to free up storage space.

I also used some time this summer to attempt to get ahead on my unit plans for the first few months of the school year. Being a newer teacher I find I still spend a lot of time getting to know the curriculum and developing unit and lesson plans. I'm hoping the result of giving up some of my summer free time will be fewer weekends spent at school over the course of the school year.

 I definitely enjoy heading into the new year feeling prepared and ready to go but I also don't want to get into the habit of filling my summer with lesson planning. Then again I feel like spending a full two months away from school would leave me feeling disconnected from everything. I guess I won't actually be able to test that theory until I try it though. Okay, I am officially rambling about this topic so I'm going to ask you to join in with your opinions. Does anyone else use summer time for planning? Do you think it is a worthwhile use of your time? Do you find it stops the longer you have been teaching?

I would love to hear your thoughts. It would be nice to know if I am a crazy work-a-holic or if this is just what dedicated teachers do with their "free" time. Talk to you soon!