Monday, September 15, 2014

Reflective Blogging Challenge

While I was cultivating the idea of starting a blog, this Reflective Teaching: A 30 Day Blogging Challenge for Teachers came through my Pinterest feed.  (Actually, I have a group of educators who all pin to the same "Teachery" board together and a friend pinned this.  I highly recommend following your friends and having a shared board.  Seeing what others are interested in at that moment or passing along ideas can be so inspiring!)

I was, in fact, inspired.  Since I want to get into a regular habit of writing, reflecting and blogging, and since I didn't think I could actually write about co-teaching each day, I plan to use their suggestions as posts occasionally, too.  Here goes.

Day 1:  Write your goals for the school year.  Be as specific or abstract as you'd like to be!

Well, I did just meet with one of my grade level teams and our goal is:  "Between September and February, students will improve their ability to state a claim and support it by citing text-based evidence as measured by district Common Assessments and other teacher measures. Blah blah blah."  OK, for some of us this makes some sense but for non-educators that probably sounds pretty boring and bizarre.  Luckily, I have some other goals.

 Reflection.  This blog is part of that.  My plan is to write more, think back and look for patterns.  Also, I will need to use this reflection as a basis for discussion, clarification and adjustment with my co-teachers.

Integration.  I wrote this a few weeks ago thinking about integrating myself into my new school home.  I signed up for a committee and am trying my best to reach out & connect to my coworkers.  This year, integration is easier than typical as I'm not only part of the Special Ed team, but also 2 different grade level teams.  Of course, being a co-teacher means I'm also facilitating the greater integration of Special Ed students into the Gen Ed setting!

Questioning & Discussion.  I'm working on upping my game as far as group discussion and student questions go.  My attempts to move out of fact-based questions have sometimes stopped short right around, "And what do you think about that?"  My goal would be moving toward more analysis, connection between topics and capitalizing on student curiosity, letting them develop questions .

I'll let you know how I do with my goals through the year!  What are your goals for this year?  

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