Summer: Rev-Up

With the culmination of summer school this past Tuesday, I felt able to crawl out of a planning-by-the-day hole that has trapped me for the past year, since I first started the Strategies for Success class at H.T.

I've got a whole new plan of attack for the coming year deriving from the Loyola Office of Catholic Schools School Leadership Conference a couple weeks back. It was really inspiring to meet with teachers from all over the country who face similar challenges at their schools.

The biggest lessons that I will incorporate into my teaching are:

• that data should drive all, or most, decision-making in the classroom,
  
• that teachers must start with the vision, the goal, or the outcome (whatever you want to call it), and then move toward the small daily tasks.
  

A real fault in my thinking last year is evidenced by the phrase that I said to myself so many times: "What are we going to do tomorrow?"

What I should have been saying is, "What should my students learn by the end of this year, and what can we do tomorrow to help accomplish that?"

and last,

• that Professional Learning Communities, or teachers talking constructively and collaboratively, are essential to a school's effectiveness and collegial climate.

I should also add that this year I'd really like to keep up this running reflection via Blogger. Last year, I entertained the idea of having a teacher blog, but wrote about 2 entries. I think that pushing myself to write in a public forum about my experiences will not only help me to cope with some of the issues I can anticipate, having one year under my belt, but will also help my loved ones to know what is going on with me, why I'm busy, why I'm stressed, why I'm overjoyed at small victories, etc. All that without me having to yammer it in their ears.