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.
