Summer Goal Setting

I have been talking about how and why we need to evolve as educators and I hope you are thinking about your own teaching practices while following me through my personal evolution. What I love about education is that there is always room to analyze our practice, make changes and be innovative in how we provide materials to students.

We all know that being a teacher has so many dimensions and there is never a DULL moment…NEVER!  Sometimes the job is so overwhelming you want to start a new career. If that is you, don’t worry we have all been there. And honestly, as a teacher, we can’t do it all…not all at once anyway. But what we can do is take on one challenge at a time as we continue to improve the services we provide to our students and the educational community we belong to.  

Join the summer 2020 Professional Development and upgrade your lessons. 

The first thing you need to remember in setting goals for yourself is that you can’t make a million changes at once. So now that it is summer, and you have a break from your regular teaching duties, pick one thing to focus on so you don’t feel overwhelmed when the school year starts.  

1. Pick one thing you want to tackle
2. Decide how much time you want to spend on it
3. Focus on the task you are wanting to accomplish until it is complete
4. Don’t get sidetracked on another goal

Identify Your Need

When deciding on what you want to accomplish, look at your needs.  What did you struggle with most this last school year?  How did your classroom environment make you feel?  What level did you struggle with most?  Do you feel pride and satisfaction in your lesson planning?  How was your relationship with students? How do feel about your school’s “buzzwords” or goals?  If any of these questions make you feel anxious, nervous or give you mixed feelings, you might want to choose that to focus on. Maybe there is another area in your teaching practice you want to improve upon.  

Create an Action Plan

After choosing a task you feel needs to be tackled, think about how you can create a plan of action.  

1. Identify what you need to change, modify or recreate
2. Address 1 – 5 priorities to change for that task
3. Jot down a plan
4. Create a timeline for accomplishing each priority

Here is a sample goal setting plan for creating a better ASL 4 class next year.

Priorities	Action Plan	Deadline
Area 1   Lesson planning	Create a roadmap for ASL 4 that outlines outcomes and expectations for students…I can statements.	July 15, 2020
Area 2   Activities that engage	Create one new extended lesson for each unit of study for ASL 4 that can be done independently for combo class or hybrid model.	August 1, 2020
Area 3   Higher level thinking	Incorporate more independent analytical work, review videos on literature and YouTube that are already available.	August 13, 2020
Area 4   Stations	Prepare station work for review and output for each unit of study.	August 21, 2020

Naturally, you can have more or fewer priorities depending on what you are focusing on.  Also, consider incorporating new technology into your lesson plans. I also like to check to see if my activities I provide use mixed modalities to cater to the various types of learners in the classroom (kinetic, linguistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, etc.).

Find a Partner

Goals are easier to accomplish if we share them with others. Tell a friend about your goals and how you plan to accomplish them. If you do that, you are more likely to succeed at meeting deadlines and actually finishing the work. Even better, grab a co-worker or an online buddy from your social media group that has the same goal as you and work together to accomplish it. Two brains are always better than one and with modern technology like Google, Zoom, and Skype, we can easily communicate even if we live far away from each other.  

If you want an accountabilabuddy (this is what we call out buddies at my school site), join the summer PD and tackle your goals.

Get Social

If you have questions, let’s talk in the Creative ASL Teaching Facebook group.

Join the conversation in our Facebook group.

Don’t miss out on a sale, FREEBIE, or new product. Follow Creative ASL Teaching on TpT