IT'S ONLY BEEN 2 WEEKS!

I've had students in my classroom for 2 weeks as of this past Friday.  And I'm in disbelief.  For many reasons really.

First of all, I honestly can't believe it was only 3 weeks ago that I was heading back to work.  This year was the first year that I felt so rushed in getting back to school.  With traveling during the month of August, I got back home just in time to plan a wedding slideshow which turned into a mini-documentary as I fiddled with my Mac, create a toast to the bride for my sister, learn to play and sing an Elton John song to sing at the ceremony, while attempting to fit in some travel scrapbooking and back-to-school planning.  And with only 2 days to visit my classroom before opening the doors to our first official day back, it was a bit of a crazy start.  And apparently, that was only 3 weeks ago.  Time has flown by.

And I can't help but notice my head is right back in the game.  And exhausted.  Only 3 weeks in, and my spare moments are few and far between.  And most of those spare moments are spent thinking about what I need to be doing, or want to be doing, for my students and my classroom.  Or those quiet early minutes I spend in the shower in the morning are used to think about what I can do for Kevin.  Or Ryan.  From the first moment that I got that feeling of back to school being just around the corner, my brain started to spin new ideas for the year.  In fact, I'm not entirely sure my brain ever truly shuts off, but I must admit, I do enjoy the few weeks of summer when I do prioritize other things over teaching.  It rejuvenates me.  I need it.  But once the new year is around the corner, I immediately begin reflecting on ideas from the past year and how I want to improve them.  Or ideas that I started to experiment with but want to see put in place on a wider scale.  I have officially decided that this job will never get any easier for me.  Because as each year goes by, I learn something new.  And that becomes a new project.  A new experiment.  A new learning opportunity for my students.  Which I think is why one of the hardest jobs (or perhaps more questionable jobs) for me in the fall is making my course outlines.  Because I have no idea what I'll know in even 1 month that could give me some new direction for the students and I to follow.  I know I need some sort of a plan though.  I'm most definitely a planner and need a direction. 

So, for this year, I've started off the year with a few initiatives in mind. 

• I'm working with another colleague in my school to expand the use of edmodo, getting all grade 7 students and staff on board with the site and the opportunities it brings.  

• I'm planning to try to implement more Quickwrites and student journaling, inspired by the work of Penny Kittle, into my English language arts program.  

• I'm going to continue following the foundations of Penny Kittle's reading workshop structure, which I started doing last year and found had great results with students' love for reading as well as literacy skills.  I hope to get the students using goodreads.com to lengthen their "What's next" list of books.

• I've always tried to differentiate and meet students where they are at.  But this year is going to prove to be trickier in this area than the other years I've taught.  I have a larger range of needs in my classes than I've ever had before, and I know this is going to mean I need to do things differently.  I've been looking into using the site Manga High to help meet the diverse learning needs in these classes. 

• I have had the opportunity to work with Faye Brownlie and some members of my staff on class profiles and hope to see that process come to light within our school. 

• I'm co-teaching this year, after experimenting with the benefits of this process last year.  I'm looking forward to working with a larger group of staff members and looking at the various ways we can have students benefiting from this opportunity.

• I just created grade 6, 7, and 8 math diagnostics in the hopes of helping teachers determine where student strengths and needs are when planning for instruction, intervention, and goals for the math classroom.  

• I'm working with 3 other teachers to restructure our student voice program at our school, attempting to put a larger weight on the voice our students.  With that in mind, I have the opportunity in November to attend the Me to We Day held in Winnipeg for the first time.

And now I see why the time has flown by!

My hope for this blog is to create a space where I can explore, reflect, share, and discuss some of these projects for the year.  As I traveled this summer, I wrote a daily blog entry to my friends and family back home.  I really looked forward to doing it each evening.  I must confess, I've started a journal numerous times, and I've never been able to see it through.  But now, I find that each day I explore the blogs of others, and learn from others, and explore my Twitter feed, inspired by the new ideas I see shared and inspired by the passion others have for teaching. 

As I search for exactly where my passion lies, I know that one of my favourite parts of teaching is the collaboration.  The creation of new materials or ideas through the collaboration of colleagues.  The sharing of the successes.  The sharing of the failures. 

And somewhere in there, among the need for collaboration and the passion we all have for teaching, is the purpose of this blog. 

Now, let's see if I can keep it up.