New (School) Year Resolutions

This marks day one *I’m a few days late – oh well* of my 30 day blog challenge put on by Te@ch Thought – what a great idea! For details, click here! As educators, I feel like there’s no such thing as TOO much reflection – so here goes working toward being a more reflective teacher! I feel like this is a great time to start reflecting as we are in week 6 (year round calendar) and I have some time with my students under my belt!

New (School) Year Resolutions

1. Positive Parent E-mails (see my previous blog post #SmileOnSunday for details) – I plan to send at least 5 to 8 positive parent e-mails per week.

2. Grade Less – I believe that we cannot make things that are important mandatory. I do not believe that attaching a grade to assignment is motivation for students to try their best. That being said, I plan to make grades less important and make learning most important this year! Yes, there will be proficiency-based grades for assessments…but forget homework grades and using grades as an incentive. Truth is, a lot of students are no longer motivated by the grade. They’re motivated by what motivates them and that does not look the same from one student to the next!

3. Present at a Conference – I LOVE teaching! What could be more fun than teaching my own peers about something awesome I do in my classroom? I really hope to attend and present at a foreign language conference this year.

4. Read to my Students – One of my college professors read us a novel in an education class and it was my FAVORITE!! I am doing this already with my Spanish 1 students – we have kindergarten day once a week where I read them a chapter from Brandon Brown quiere un perro. They LOVE it. My goal is to keep doing this even after we finish Brandon Brown.

5. Pen Pals – I am trying it with Spanish 3 first since there are only 14 of them! We are using penpals.com for this project. We do not have pals yet – so I will reflect on this when we get going! 

I love reading my colleagues’ #reflectiveteacher blogs! What a great challenge. Thanks @teachthought!