Coming back to school after winter break is a time that can’t be explained to people not in education. Everyone is tired, there are new clothes a-plenty, and we all feel (somewhat) rested and rejuvenated. I’m also making some little changes in my classroom to see what happens.
- I’m structuring my classroom to minimize negative interactions. After some reflection I noticed that I was having an increasing number of negative interactions with my students. Most of this was because there was ambiguity of what the students were supposed to be doing and any given time. To remedy this, I’m making sure that my expectations for my students are presented clearly before we get into anything. I’m also making sure that I’m reinforcing positive behavior and putting kids in a place that they can succeed where they are. Changing seating charts and changing my delivery of lessons slightly are part of this plan of mine. I’ve only had two days worth of school so far, but so far it’s working well.
- I’ve decided to have fun no matter what. An old principal of mine used to always say “choose your attitude.” I found that at the end of last semester I was not choosing the best attitude I could have. I’m going to do the best I can to choose my attitude daily and laugh a lot more this semester than I did last semester (which was quite a bit).
- I want to help people more than look out for myself. I’ve been known, at times, to hunker down and concentrate solely on what I need and what matters to me. This next semester I want to make sure that I’m helping out others as much as I can. Even if that is changing my reactions to things, changing the way I speak to people, or rolling up my shirt sleeves and helping people get things done.
The bottom line is that I want to be a better person than I am today. I don’t think that I’m a bad person, but I want to make sure that I’m always pushing myself to be better in new more difficult ways.