I know, the year already ended, but this is when I plan! I stumbled across the New York Times forum asking students and teachers alike to reflect on the past school year. I am currently avoiding washing dishes and taking online professional development classes over my iPad, so this is the perfect excuse for procrastinate that I was looking for! Full disclousure – I am not spending the time to spell check. This was a reflection activity for me and I doubt anyone will actually read the entire thing. I’m kinda boring.

How do you want to remember about this school year? Why?
I loved that found my spark again. I loved my students, I loved my classroom (minus the toilet noises), and I loved that I finally felt like I was actually teaching my students. I could see their improvement through their writing! I felt effective! I think after years of teaching a tested subject and/or teaching seniors, I think my perspective and attitude towards teaching had shifted. Yes, I loved AP literature, but I would get bored or reading and writing literary analysis all year long. Yes, I had more flexibility in my English IV classes, general English classes felt too rushed, too general for me to really teach anything. I felt like all I ended doing was reviewing from the previous years (find the thesis, identify the text structure, etc.).

What are you especially grateful for this year? To whom would you most like to write a letter of gratitude if you could?
I am grateful for Mrs. Holden. She was my appraiser this year (basically, she graded me as a teacher) and was so supportive. I loved working with her, even if I was just bouncing ideas off of her head. She didn’t just go through the motions, she listened. She wanted to help me do my job. I’ve seen a lot of principals come and go, but there are only a handful of administrations that I would follow if they moved to a different school.

What surprised you?
I was surprised at the number of students in my classes who struggled for a variety of reasons. I made assumptions about my students based on the fact that they were taking a college class. I made assumptions about my curriculum. I am delighted that I am still able to teach the way that I do while maintaining legitimacy and my personal ethical beliefs.

What successes are you most proud of?
This is hard. I’m going to come back to this one. My dog is really well behaved compared to this time last year. He is a rescue dog and he has some issues. At first, I didn’t know if we were the right family for him, but he’s finding his place/ He just needs time, patience, and practice.

What challenged you? What helped you face or overcome those challenges?
I think I’d say personal health was a challenge this year. In 1301, I caught COVID and then immediately caught the flu. I struggled with time management. Grading 180 college essays is not the same as grading AP Literature essays. I thought that I was prepared for the grading workload, but I was not. Between this and getting sick, I always felt like I was two weeks behind everything. I was always trying to catch up. I learned that I needed reorganize my calendars to allow students to work on meangingful assignments quietly so I that I can get some grading done in class. I have a few solitions that I am going to put in place, but I worry that in order to implement it, I am going to have to change my classroom management style.

What did you learn that most matters to you, whether in or out of school?
My word of the year was legitimacy, for both myself and my studenbts. I wanted authentic writing and authenic grading. I need to set up a few protocols for next year to help prevent students from taking advantage of this. While I would prefer a paper to be turned in a day later and be written *well*  rather than turned in on time and littered with errors and EOC formulas.

What new skills, however small, did you acquire?
I am learning Lone Star’s software and LMS. I am learning both the iPad and the panel (I still call it a smartboard). I learned that I do NOT like adding Google Classroom to my grading – it did NOT help save time and ended up only confusing my students. I’ll figure out other hacks to use mote more easily within the frame of Schoology.

How have you grown — as a student, a friend, a community or family member or a person?
I had to come back to this one. I think I have grown by setting limits and being able to prioritize. In the past, I was involved with too much: ASCR, summer school, graduate school, KEA, gardening groups, and my own personal social life. I have had to figure out my priorities. When I was back in grad school, I quit ASCR because I know that I wouldn’t have the time, so when I picked it back up this year, I realized it just wasn’t worth the money to me. I told KEA that I really don’t have the time/energy to be an officer anymore. I’ve been saying no.

How could you build on that growth next year?
I think after saying “no” to everything recently, I realized where I want to say “yes.” I would like to do one thing for extra money: either adjunct at Lone Star for EDU classes or do summer school. I just should’t do both.

What would you like more of in your life? What would you like less of? Why?
I always thought I needed more time, but I think I would more executive function. I have a lot of plans and ideas, but I don’t always have the energy to implement them. It’s almost as if I spend all the energy thinking and planning and brainstorming so that I’m exhausted by the time I need to actually get the work done. I’d like less frustration. I find that I get frustrated at my family very easily and would like to be more patient with them. I don’t know why or how, but I have WAY for patience with my students than with my family members.

What music would be on a soundtrack of the 2023-24 school year for you? Why?

What books did you read this year that you would recommend to others? Why?
I finished I Never Thought of it That Way by Monica Guzman. I’d reccomend this since we are going into a contentious election season. Here is a NYT book review, but it’s behind a paywall.

My to-read list includes:
• The Gift of Fear
• The Originals

I found this AI generated passage from Amazon reviews hillarious:

 

 

 

 

 

 

About what, if anything, did you change your mind? How did that happen?
After years of thinking that I am typical, I realized that I might actually be neurodivergent. I am pretty sure I have ADHD. When I have told people about my newfound realization, people have asked me in shock, “How did you not know that?”. Last year, my husband got diagnosed with ADHD and I started reading a book about how ADHD works and affects adult relationships. As I was reading about common characteristics of people with ADHD, I frequently recognized myself in the pages. For years, I thought ADHD memes were just neurotypical people exagerrating (like when someone says they are OCD about something. They may have a preference or quirk, but not an official OCD diagnosis). I don’t use the word abelism often, but I think that this was (is?) abelism on my part because I was looking at ADHD as a deficit. Since I was managing my life and didn’t have dramatic problems (I graduated college and have a pretty stable career), I didn’t think it described me. But I have started to think about ADHD as being left handed or right handed. It’s not a negative if you are left handed – you can use use sciscors made for right handed people, but you would be more comfortable and more effective if you had left-handed scicors. I love this story about a flamingo in a polar bear world: I recognized myself in that little flamingo.

If you were to collect and graph some data about your life this school year, what would you choose to graph, and what do you think it might show? What could you learn from it?
I would like to see how I spent my time on different activities. Grading, cleaning, preparing, and zoning out. Do I use my conference period time effectively? Do I grade at home effectively? I think there is a pattern – I grade better when I have a quiet, dedicated spot without distraction, but that is really hard to get in my household. I normally go to the library and reserve a room, but I have restrictions (time and opening hours). I think if I were to finally convert the playroom into a study, I’d be able to have that spot in my own home,