A Review of My Goals

If you remember from this post, I made this list of goals:

My goals for this year:
Maintain a regular work out schedule
Get plenty of sleep
Make sure my students know I care about them
Support my students in all they do...both inside and outside the classroom
Leave school at school when I leave in the afternoons
Stay organized
Journal/blog at least once a week
Choose to have a positive attitude everyday

If I don't remind myself of them, I would probably forget about them. Having this list has really helped me be intentional about some things as I have approached this first year of teaching.

So, how am I doing so far?


Maintain a Regular Workout Schedule: Hasn't happened yet. I'm striving for this to start next week.

Get Plenty of Sleep: I don't know how teachers are able to stay up past 9pm. I have been in bed by 9:00 every night and some nights it's been even earlier than that. This is wiping me out physically. So, getting plenty of sleep hasn't been a problem. My body shuts down at night.

Make sure my students know I care about them: I hope my students have been able to tell this. I have already developed some close relationships with students. And, I always try to make sure my students know I care about them. It's easy to tell when someone doesn't feel well or if they are in a bad mood. And, I try hard to always ask them if they're okay and let them know I'm here to talk to if they want. I hope they understand that it is because I have their best interest in mind and that I care.

Support my students in all they do...both inside and outside the classroom: When I wrote this, I was aiming for supporting students' in their extracurricular activities. I haven't gotten to any yet, but have duty at them next week. So, I'll be there. I do ask about their after school activities and I hope they see that as some small level of support. I had this high expectation of myself to go to as many home events as I could (aka in my mind, all of them), but time just has not allowed for that. I'm glad that I signed up to help out at some of the events because that forced me to make time in my afternoon. I think it is important for my students to see me outside of the classroom cheering them on.

Leave school at school when I leave in the afternoons: Emotionally, I've done fine with this. Although, nothing major has happened that has really required me to turn my emotions off when I leave in the afternoon. With planning, I have not done so well with this...at all. More about that coming...

Stay organized: I am an organizational freak. And, you wouldn't really be able to tell that from my stuff so far this year (shocker!). In my head, things are organized. And, my room is not a mess, but it gets pretty chaotic with papers by the end of each day, which I of course have to straighten before I leave every afternoon. The system that is working best for me so far is to make piles of extra copies and other documents behind my desk as the week happens. Then, Friday afternoon, before I leave, I put that stack in its designated spot/notebook. So far this is working.

Journal/blog at least once a week: check!

Choose to have a positive attitude everyday: This is the one that having these goals has helped me be intentional with the most. There have been some days that I have been tired and frustrated, but because of this and promising my students I would give them a positive attitude each day if they would give me one has helped me do better with this.

Here is where I posted these goals for this past week
On the agenda for this weekend:
Go through all the work from this week that students turned in
Get planned for next week
Get organized...again
Last weekend was VERY productive and I was able to go into this past week completely planned for this week and Monday and Tuesday of next week. Which was nice because I had no time to get any planning done this week.

On the agenda for next week:
Teach an elective class for the week (aka my planning will go from 90 minutes to 45 for this week)
Have morning duty
Two faculty meetings
Progress reports
Introduce a new concept...that I don't even have my head wrapped around yet
Join the gym: I didn't join the gym this week...It was just too crazy. I know; I know...Excuses excuses. Next week...really.

More about the rest of what was on my agenda for this week coming...