Yes, summer has just started and yet I am already thinking ahead to the coming year, perhaps because I am unable to enter my classroom at the moment due to its newly waxed floors. So I plan and prep from home and meanwhile get more and more anxious/excited about the new year. This year is my 3rd year teaching and I am ready to shake things up so these are my promises to me.
I promise to not be bored. The last 2 years I have stuck to what my team members have taught and developed and it honestly made me complacent. The lessons are solid but not my style, so this year, I am doing it on my own; out with the old and in with the new. After all, if I am not excited about the lesson, how can I expect the students to be?
I promise to not be scared. I have many ideas screaming for attention and every year I take a cautious step with one or two of them. This year because of my PLN and its support I have 100's of ideas that all want to be tried. So I am going to try as many as I can without freaking out about the loss of control. So what if the lesson fails, at least I tried it.
I promise to be true to myself and reveal the techy geek I am. Sure, my students know that I like technology but not just how deep that love runs. So this year, we will make technology work for us. No more using computers just to type on, I am ready to get them sucked into the world of innovation just as I have been.
I promise to be quiet and listen, well sometimes anyway. When you have a lot of ideas like I do it can be hard to not want to share them.In fact, I can be like that annoying lapdog that barks and barks until you pet it. I have learned the hard way that sometimes people don't want to hear about new ideas, and although confounding to me, I have to accept it. So I am not going to throw my ideas in someone's face but try to entice them to come to me instead.
I promise to have more fun. Being a new mom and a new teacher can feel like you are carrying the weight of the world. But you’re not, you just feel like it. So I promise to loosen up a bit, not get so freaked out by deadlines, and continue to joke around with my students. After all, it is your personality that might just make them listen to you.
I promise to embrace the year no matter what it brings. I love to control everything; maybe that is why I am a teacher. So this will be the year that I learn to trust my students more and let them take some of the control. This is supposed to be a learning journey that we embark on, not a down-to-the-minute planned march.
