New year, New school, New Goals!

I will admit that I started this blog post about a month ago.  Thank goodness that I outlined my goals so when I revisited it, I could just write.   Past me was looking out for future me!  Thanks!

Here are my goals and their current status.   I know that there are currently 7 goals but I am feeling good about this year.

1. Remind - I previously have used Class Dojo to track not academic behaviors, communicate with parents and have students reflect on their behavior.  Since I made the move to high school this year, I didn't know where it was going to fit in but I know I needed something to communicate with parents in addition to phone calls and e-mails.  Remind has rocked my world already.  Once a parent or student signs up for your class (using a code that they text to a 6-digit number) they instantly have access to 'reminds' that you send out.  Also, there is a chat feature.  This all occurs through a text message on their phone!  It is so easy it almost too good to be true.  I want to get ALL students signed up.  This week we have open house and I am going to be hounding my freshman parents like crazy!  Not only do I want ALL to sign up, I want to challenge myself to use Remind on a daily bases. 
2. Visible Learning-  This will be my biggest challenge for the year.  I learned about this during new teacher week and I have a lot more to learn!  Here is the gist of it.  There are different instructional techniques that have an effect size.  The idea is that the larger the effect size, the greater the learning is.  Also with VL, it is about communicating Learning Targets, Success Criteria and Why we learning something to all students.  This is a lot harder than one thinks!  More to come on this topic soon... I hope. 

   

   50 Effect Sizes of Visible Learning

3. Twitter/Google-Coming from a district that was ALL tech to a district that is just starting I find myself wanting to help streamline things!  First, the district has a twister but the high school does not!  I want to tweet at my high school!  I am still getting my feet wet and don't want to disrupt things much right off the bat.  This also goes for google.  Google docs... as much as I hate the phrase, 'create a google doc for that' it is actually pretty functional.  This past Friday, I witnessed the same birthday list be sent out 4 times through email.  That was because on the 1st draft, people were left off.  The 2nd, corrections were made.  The 3rd, mistakes were found and the 4th was the FINAL I guess.   I so wanted to create the google doc and share it but I know that people aren't ready for that yet.  So my goal for Google is to educate my department on how to use google docs to streamline things.  I have started a little bit but once again, don't want to rock the boat as they say.  
   
4. Co-teaching- Work towards sharing the classroom, letting go, letting someone else in, finding a balance, working together.  Lots of work to do but hopefully some district provided PD will help me with this. It's for the better of the students.  
   
5. Workload-  I don't want to be in the 'new teacher' funk again.  This means, I have a life and I need to find a balance between my work and my home life.  I need to set time aside to work and have fun the other times.  I have found myself saying, "I am going to have to do work on that Sunday so I can't _______"   That's not fun.  
   
6. Blogging-  I want to blog at least once a week.  Ideally I want to do it every other day but I know that will never happen so I will write at least once a week.  Once I get in that habit, I will up my goal.  

What are your goals for the year?   Do you have something that you have started and will do whatever it takes to follow through with it?  I would love to hear from you.

Have a great day!