Sunday, January 19, 2014

Well I'm starting off the new year- and new semester by attacking that classroom organization thing. After a week full of exams , I had one day to work some magic . I really wanted to scrub off the cobwebs of last semester and start fresh. Let me show you the before pictures...







Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Classroom Resolutions

Happy New Year! Today is the last day of  2013, and I know many of you are rolling around resolutions for 2014 in your mind: lose weight, save more money, exercise more (yeah right), finally organize the garage. I have decided to make my resolutions in the classroom. Yes sir, my own little professional development plan.

Now, I'm a fly by the seat of my pants kinda person--so I want to be very methodical and organized about this. Maybe I should make these new goals SMART goals. That is one of the hot acronyms in my district. A SMART goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely or tangible. Let's take these one by one...specific (they will all be for me), measurable (do I really need to measure them- we are already measured too much),attainable (well I hope so), relevant (well duh...), and timely (I think I'll give myself a year).

Wait! These goals should be different--not shaped to fit the parameters of someone's definition of education--they should fit me.

Let's create a new acronym for the new year: STUPID goals .

S- Savory: all my goals for the new year will be very tasty . Teaching should be delicious!
T-Teachable: If the new goal is productive then I must share it with other teachers!
U-Usable: I will be willing to use this new technique.
P-Powerful/Positive : This goal will make a powerful change for the positive.
I-Interactive: I can change it and manipulate it when I need to.
D-Dependable: I can depend on this new goal to make teaching more effective and much easier.

So...this is what I came up with:
1.Organize my classroom storage.
2.Reach more students on a personal level each day.
3.Think more like a facilitator and less like a worker.
4.Create more .
5.Post everything on this blog.

It's going to be a wild ride. Will you join me? I would love to hear your classroom resolutions. They can be SMART, STUPID, or just plain crazy. Send me your new goals and I'll work on #5 by posting my progress on the other four goals.