Rev up your engines!

I'm gearing up for a new school year.  I've passed through the typical summer phases:

• Thank goodness!
• Beach time
• Denial
• What do I need to buy?
• Buying all the things
• Planning
• Waiting

About a week ago, I was nowhere near emotionally ready to head back to the classroom.  Now I'm ready to bang down the door Jack Nicholson-Style to get into my classroom. (Seriously, I'm sure the floors are perfect.  I'll sweep and dust and wipe down; just let me in!)

While immersed in deep denial that I do, in fact, have to return to work, I had the opportunity to see Tracy Zager speak at Mt. Holyoke College.  If you teach math, I highly recommend her book Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You'd Had.  Listening to her speak and being surrounded by like-minded educators ignited the spark I needed to get back on track.  Now, halfway through Ilan Seidel Horn's Motivated, and I'm ready to go!  

It's been a while since I've blogged, but thought perhaps I could use it as a place to help me set goals and assess my progress toward them.  To that end, I'll share some of my big goals for the year with you (and try to remember that these ideas are formed in my quiet home-office without the realities of actual real life teaching in front of me, so as to be gentle with myself when I sometimes miss the mark),

• Weekly Number Talks and/or Counting Circles
• Walk around A LOT more
• Meet with small, flexible groups more often
• Identify and remediate multiplication fluency gaps EARLY
• Focus more on the standards and less on the text
• Do at least one 3 Act Task per unit
• Greet every child, every day
• Write each child a personalized note at least once this year
• Include a weekly graph and ask students what questions could be answered using the graph during the Do Now
• Remember quality over quantity
• Ask myself: "Is this what I'd want for my child?"

Perhaps sharing these goals here will help me be more accountable throughout the year.  At the end of last year, I made a list of what went well and what needed to be adjusted.  I am once again looking forward to random seating, flexible seating, using the rug area for lessons. predictable structure with Do Nows (a once dreaded requirement, now something I could not do without), Fun Friday, and a student supply center.  Wrap Ups and Extra Help hours need some TLC, and the Fun Friday incentive needs to be finessed (more on that in another post), but I'm ready to get started.

I'm so thankful for the time I have off.  The solar recharging is necessary in making sure that my students get the best me this year.  This time off is invaluable for its restorative properties, as most of this work and reflection would be diminished without it.  Thank you, summer.  Now let me into my classroom!  I'm ready.