My Final Exam

I cannot believe that it is already reaching the end of my first year. There have been so many memorable moments, both great and not, that I am sad that I did not get to document or share them all. Often, I wanted to share questions or stories but found myself absolutely exhausted at the end of the day wanting to do nothing more than eat, sleep, and not use my brain for a bit.

With the end of the year also comes those final reflective assignments. I have decided to complete of them here as a way to share my thoughts from the entire year. I am just copying the questions from the assignment and answering them here. Nothing fancy, just thinking and writing.

1. What worked for you this year?
• I was pretty successful at making sure that my students knew I believed in them and expected only their best. This was something that I committed myself to doing before I even walked into my classroom. I knew that I wanted to be someone that pushed students to do their best, even when they felt like their best wasn't good enough. This might seem like something intangible and unmeasurable, but I tried to capture it anyways. I gave my students an anonymous survey (while I was absent so there was no way I could pressure students into giving positive responses) and I learned quite a bit. One of the good things I found was that when asked to respond to "My teacher expects us to do our best in this class", most of my students selected "Yes, Always". There was not one response lower than "Maybe/Sometimes". For me, this means that I have to continue pushing students to be their best at all times. It really does mean something to students to have someone in their corner believing in them.
2. What didn't work for you?
• Speaking of anonymous surveys, there were two areas that I really feel need to be improved next year: respect and empathy. I saw this show up in some of the questions that my students responded to in the aforementioned survey. They generally did not feel as though their peers followed directions the first time or respected the teacher. It is not in my nature to be incredibly strict so I knew that was going to be a challenge from the start. Seeing this show up for other students really means that I have to be far more serious with how I approach the first months of school. I don't want to have to move to the "no smiles until November" ideology, but I also have to find a better way to balance the way my classroom runs. It's year one. My management overall did not work. It doesn't feel great to say, but I would rather face the facts and make a change then pretend things are great and continue to struggle.
3. What are one or two strategies that you want to focus on implementing next year? Why? How?
• One strategy I want to focus on next year is differentiated instruction. This year, I felt as though I was barely able to develop a general plan for all of my students, much less multiple sets of plans for students of varying abilities. I know that this is something that comes with experience and I will get better at, but it never hurts to start in this upcoming year by adding an option for assignments here or there, finding a wider variety of multimedia to cover topics, or even expanding my knowledge of educational technologies.
• Another strategy I want to develop farther are stations. This is something that I felt I got a start on this year but did not really take it as far as it could go. I know that this will ultimately be one of the greatest tools in my toolbox for ensuring student success, but right now my stations make my head spin and I can never tell if they're going well or are more like a train wreck. This is one that I will spend quite a bit of time over the summer refining and placing into my lesson plans.
4. What are one or two units that you want to focus on improving next year? Why? How?
• Matter and Energy
• The properties of matter is just a lot of information. There are a lot of new terms, tools, and ideas. I think this ultimately just means I need to find a better way to introduce the components of this unit earlier in the year (use a tool here or there) and review and spiral constantly throughout the year. It was pretty easy to see how my instruction could have improved for this unit.
• Earth and Space
• This unit had a mix of difficult concepts and poor timing. There were quite a few ideas that were a bit abstract and hard to find a way for students to interact with meaningfully. In reality, how do you get students to interact with an idea like "climate occurs over longs periods of time" in the span of a week? It was certainly a challenge I want to find better methods for. Plus, this unit was split by Spring Break and that just made teaching anything far more difficult than I ever realized.
5. What is the biggest takeaway from your first year?
• Teaching is so many things. Hilarious. Exhausting. Inspiring. Draining. Scary. Intense. Rewarding. Often multiple things in a single hour, if not in the span of ten minutes. I found a way to survive it all this year. I will only get better as time goes on.
6. How does this year leave you? Are you inspired? Dejected? Tired? Horrified? Excited? Ambivalent?
• I am certainly tired. This is not even the physical type of tired. Most days, I can still make it to the gym or throw the football with my students at recess. I just feel mentally drained. It is a pretty new feeling for me. I think like working out though, with consistency, my mind and body will develop the stamina required to make it through the entire school year without feeling this drained by May.
7. What do you need to be the kind of teacher that you want to be?
• Summer. Vacation. I knew teaching was hard but wow. This summer will be about relaxing for sure. I will spend quite a bit of time away from curriculum development, classroom management strategies, and other forms of professional development. I need those things, but I also need a break. I am wildly excited for summer to refresh and come back in the fall ready to try a whole new set of ideas and make the most of my time with students.
8. What did you learn most from your students?
• I have learned that I really need to relax. I get really caught up in wanting everything to be perfect and when you're in a room of 20 or more 11 year olds, absolutely nothing is going to go perfectly. In fact, one of the things I can count on is that no matter how well I think things are planned, it is impossible to foresee all the possibilities. I just have to be flexible and roll with whatever walks into school every single day.
9. What did you learn most from your colleagues?
• I am grateful to be at a school where the people I work with are incredibly supportive. I have learned so much from everyone I get to interact and I am grateful for the experience. I think one of the most grounding things that my colleagues have taught me, especially the other teachers on my team, is that I am more than the test scores of my students. It is important for students to do and there is work that goes into that. The trick that they have really emphasized is that I shouldn't beat myself up when scores are not what I expect because the scores do not always represent the human or the story behind it. They are just numbers and at the end of the day, I should not lose sleep or worry myself silly over them.
10. What did you learn about yourself?
• I am getting better and better about taking risks. Twice this year, I have found myself on stage dancing in front of my students. I still won't tell my students how old I am or that this is officially my first year teaching, but I think they all know by this point. I think that being honest with students really shows them that you are someone they can trust. I know I need to do better at this, as I am not a naturally trusting person myself, but it means a lot for relationship building. I really think that I can push myself even farther and be a positive role model for students who are afraid to open up and be themselves.