Wednesday 17 December 2014

School's out for summer

So another year down.  I feel as though I might have improved and achieved something this year.  Before I go into reverse hibernation (whereby Australians close themselves in their homes with air-conditioning or other cooling methods in order to wait out the long, hot summer) I thought I might have a think about my achievements for this year and my goals for next year.

Achievements:
  • finished the school's yearbook on time and it was received with glowing reviews
  • was given compliments on the reporting comments I wrote for my 10 Maths class
  • marked all assessment in a timely fashion and gave notes for parents about results
  • took less than 5 days off this year (an extremely vast improvement on last year)
  • was helpful to colleagues when possible or at least didn't insult them when I was impatient and cranky

One of the biggest things this year was how much I was able to help my husband in his first year of teaching.  We were back to back staffroom buddies.  Unfortunately he was not given a contract for next year.  I was hoping to increase my subject load, but alas that was not meant to be either.  I wasn't able to get my 10 bridging class again either, or any English classes, next year I'll be teaching 11 and 12 Prevocational Maths, both of which are not difficult content wise (writing the units for these was my first jobs when I started at this school).  So my goals will not be content oriented, but classroom management and engagement oriented.

Goals for 2015:
  • learn to deal with rude students in a calm, constructive manner
  • incorporate group work at least once a week
  • engage with technologically based activities beyond the basic uploading of worksheets
  • plan for classes in advance, ideally a week at a time
  • adjust the Realm of Learning in order to motivate students further (this will include some reworking of the levels and achievements, gah)
  • engage with educational texts (e.g. Marzarno) and incorporate research into my lesson plans
  • write actual lesson plans
I'm trying very much to focus on the positives, so I'm not going to regale my non-readers with sad stories from the year.

This was a very text heavy post, so here's a blurry, Christmassy photo of Seb to balance it out.

Wait til you see the dachshund in this outfit