Improving from Reflection

With the close of another school year, I set here and think about how things turned out, what I could have done differently and how can I improve.  One of the most valuable things teachers can do reflect on things. For this to be productive, the teacher needs to be honest and open to feedback from students, administrators and most importantly, themselves.

At the close of the school year, I created a survey through google forms for my students to fill out.  I asked a variety of questions dealing with pace, assessments, technology, favorite part, things to improve on, what they thought I could do to improve students speaking during class.  If I had to pick the one thing that I really need to improve on is having students speak more during class.  This will help students gain confidence and true language learning can take place.

I started the year using some flipped class in my Spanish 2.  The students struggled at first getting use to the new methodology.  The students adjusted after a couple of weeks.  However, I found myself reverting back to the traditional set up as I was planning during the school year.  I justified my actions because I was busy and had other things going on.  Now, looking back, I wish I forced myself to plan out and continued using the flipped model.  It's not easy setting here and realizing what I should have done this past school year. The way to curb this feeling is to take the experience and grow with from it.  This is the purpose for reflection anyway.

Starting this summer, I have decided to dive into one of my favorite hobbies, reading.  I am going to balance reading educational books by reading novels by authors that I enjoy (David Baldacci and Lee Child).  I am reading Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and have started rereading Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.  A colleague of mine has let me borrow her copy of Flipped 2.0 so I can read the section by Heather Witten on the flipped class in the World Language classroom.

My goal is to reorganize my curriculum to create units and to set up a flipped model classroom.  I also would like to dabble in #geniushour and standards based learning.  I would love to do everything right off the bat, but I do not want to do a disservice to any of the items, so I will focus on the flipped class and sprinkle in genius hour and standards based learning.

Teachers should always strive to improve their craft and never be satisfied.  That is why I LOVE Twitter. The amount of professional development at your fingertips is amazing.  I have already signed up for an edcamp in Hilliard, Ohio (suburb of Columbus), and have lined myself up for 2-3 google hangouts with the great group of LangCamp teachers.

My goal for the next school year is to make time to blog once a week about things that are going on, my successes and my struggles.  By using the blog, I am hoping to improve.  Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome!

My goal as a teacher is to do the best job I can impacting the lives of my students.  I am not satisfied just keeping the status quo.  I want to find new and innovative ways to reach my students and get them to reach their ultimate potential.