We did it! We finished the School Year!
Congratulations! We did it! We successfully taught the children entrusted to us during a Global Pandemic. Whether you were Brick, Click or Hybrid, I am certain this year was filled with unique experiences. Some of those experiences were great and, let’s be honest, some were not so great. But now… it’s summer!
As I always encourage you to do – take some time and just reflect on all the things that went well this year. It was a tough year and we definitely need some encouragement. Personally, I am a list maker, so I usually take the time to physically list the items that I felt were positives in a given school year. Did I do things differently this year? Definitely. Will any of those things transfer? Hopefully.
This year, I am going to let you see my list in the hope that it will encourage you to make one, too. It really is helpful to see your accomplishments in black and white. So here goes:
1. I upped my technology game and I hope to continue improving on this in the coming year. I utilized our online lesson plan/homework software to a greater extent and I assigned more lessons that the students turned in digitally. I began the year with several assignments that could only be found online. This motivated all my students to make sure they had their log-in credentials and knew how to access the site. I plan on beginning the next school year in the same manner. I assigned things like Ted Talks, podcasts and threw in some online content-specific games for an added measure of fun. It mixed things up a bit and we all enjoyed the change of pace.
2. I applied real world issues to more of my lessons. Here are some examples:
a. My students are spending an unhealthy amount of time on their phones and on social media. So. when we were studying the brain, I created a dopamine challenge where students had to go one whole day without technology. They had to plan their day and write down what they did and how they felt during this time.
b. I added a disinfecting research component to our bacteria study. The students researched how different chemicals killed bacteria and viruses.
c. While we were studying white blood cells, we performed a short study on how vaccines work with our immune system. We specifically compared the COVID-19 vaccines to other common vaccines to find their similarities and their differences.
I definitely want to get better at adding current real-world events to my lessons.
3. I really focused on having my students take responsibility for their behavior and their learning. I am creating several posts on these topics that you will see in the near future, but I am excited by the strides I and my students made in these areas. While you are waiting for these posts, I encourage you to read the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink. It is not specifically aimed at teachers but his work is very transferrable to the classroom setting.
4. I took time to check in on my students and I increased my parent communications. As I have stated before, this was a tough year and not just for educators. Everyone faced difficulties including our children and their families. I tried to make time to talk to students who I felt were struggling and I reached out to their parents more than in past years. We have a commendation component of our school system software. I tried to watch for my students exceeding expectations and then documented that in an email that was sent home to parents. I had a number of parents so thrilled to see a positive report about their child in their In-box. I hope to continue making this part of my routine.
Now for the confessional. I have told you that I will always try to be “real” with you, so I want you to know that I also had some pretty rough moments this year. My year was not all rainbows and unicorns. I suffered losses personally. I had students whose behavior was greatly affected by the turmoil in our world and they frequently acted out during class time. I did not finish the entire Chemistry curriculum this year. I had to streamline a few other units in Anatomy class. If you only look at items 1-4 above, you may think my year was just one success after another. It’s important that you understand that things did not always go as planned. But that is precisely why it’s so important to focus on the encouraging things first. I could beat myself up about the things that I did not accomplish, but I cannot begin my summer reflection time in that way. I need to start from a positive space and then slowly bring in the negative things to help me improve next year.
I hope this post helps you start your summer off in an optimistic direction. So, sit down with a tall glass of iced tea, take a deep breath and just be thankful for the year we have completed!
I would love to hear about the things that you learned from your year and how you plan to apply them to next year!
Leave your comments below – or email me (as many of you have been doing this year!) I love interacting with you! Iron sharpens iron!