Summer Reflections

The best part of teaching is the ability to start and finish every year.  Summer provides the perfect time to reflect on your past your and make corrections.  More importantly, it allows us to grow as educators and improve student experience the following year.  Kids always come into my room after moving up and ask “Why didn’t we do this last year?”  I like to reply that we are always making thing better.   If you haven’t started this process, here’s some areas for reflection to help improve next year teaching.

Classroom Management

• How was behavior this year?
• What discipline issues was I on top of?
• Where did I let things slide, how could I do better?
• What new issues are appearing (vaping/ ecigs for example)
• Were my seating charts effective, did the students position in class enhance their learning experience.
• What were major distractions in my day?  Which ones can I get rid of (hmm, unplugging my classroom phone)

Physical Resources

• What materials did I need?
• What lessons would be greatly improved if I had planned? 
• Are there any DonorsChoose.org resources I could create?
• Do I have the art supplies I need for creative projects?
  

Lesson Content

• What lessons do I need some extra time learning materials so I can improve my teaching?  In my case I love biology, however I struggle with geology. 
  
• How could I improve the organization of learning in my classroom?  Notebooks, computers, paper shuffling.  Are there places to improve here?
• What lesson sequences were winners?  Which ones need some extra help. 

 
These are just a few questions I look at in the summer, this could go on and on.  Currently I am working through student notebooks to look at what exactly my kids did over the course of the year.  These provide valuable clues for my pacing.  Additionally, I am looking to better organize my physical space to include more supplies for make space type activities.