My four goals for next school year.

An educator that I like to follow on Twitter blogged a few weeks ago about his goals for this school year. You can read about it here. http://stephenlazar.com/blog/2012/03/reflection-on-school-year-goals-3/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+stephenlazar%2FfaZq+%28Outside+the+Cave%29 Thank you Stephen.  This post has inspired me to set my own goals for this coming school year.  Here they are:

Goal 1:  Use a real grade book.

This goal at first seemed to completely oppose my love for technology, but over the past three years I have found that just posting grades straight to edline causes me a few hindrances. The first is that I must key in grades as soon as I grade papers, which has its own logistical challenges.  During marking period change, I cannot take any grades until I know for certain that report cards have been printed.  I have recently started printing a spreadsheet of student names and keeping track on grades on this sheet, and I do like it.  The second challenge that I face by not keeping a hard copy of a grade book is my attendance.  I take attendance on a daily basis as is policy, but it is not at the front of my mind.  I would like to take a more proactive role in getting my students to attend class and having access to these records without having to log in every time I want to see them (I think) will help me do this.  Lastly, keeping track of makeup work has been one of my biggest oversights.  I think I can keep track better of how long a student has to do their makeup work if I'm tracking in a hard copy grade book.

Goal 2: Have ALL of my Algebra 1 students at 65% or above at midyear.

At our school, if a student is failing Algebra 1 at midyear, they are removed from the course in order to allow them to take another class and get credit.  If they stay in the class, odds are that they will loose two credits, which is a bad idea.  I usually have three or four students that I place in other classes at midyear, and then they take the class over again the next fall.  My goal is to really work at making sure all of my students get to stay in the class all year.  I really want all of my students to succeed, and every year I feel more confident as a teacher.  I have been working a few ideas that I think will accomplish this goal.  I'll post separately about those in the next goal.

Goal 3: Develop a recover day plan.

As this year is coming to a close, I have started to find a groove that is really working with my freshmen. I usually start the week with some introductory conceptual lessons.  The middle of the week is more of a skill building type of structure were the students just work on practice of skills.  Fridays tend to be the day that I assess their learning, and then the rest of the class is spent reviewing missed concepts.  What I would really like to turn this part of class into is a way for the students to practice skills not yet mastered, and then once mastered can receive credit for it.  I am not sure at this moment how I am going to accomplish this goal, but I think that once I do, it will have big impact on goal #2.

Goal 4: Reflect and revisit my goals once a month.

This is my final and most important goal.  I own this one completely to Stephen Lazar.  In my college course work, reflection was always stressed, but I never really understood what that meant.  Since I have started blogging, I have really started reflecting.  Now I think I need to specifically reflect on these goals at a regular interval.  I have arbitrarily chosen once a month, so we shall see how this goes!  Wish me luck!