Planning...

So here I sit about 2 weeks away from starting my almost second year of teaching!  I say “almost” 2nd year because I started at my school in November.   I learned so much last year and when I think about it, my head just swims.

I’ve always wanted to be a reflective teacher and unfortunately in the madness of my first year, I didn’t do much reflecting.  Hopefully that is what this blog will be about.

I had these big lofty dreams of getting about 1-2 months of lesson plans done during my summer break.  LOL, didn’t come close.  I have all of these issues and I know that I get so burdened in the details it paralyses me.  Some of my issues are:

1. My curriculum SUCKS!  It was written by the teacher I replaced, who finished it up after she knew she was leaving and after being paid in advance.
2. I want to do a lot of pre-assessing this year to make my lessons geared more to my students.
3. I want the first week to focus on teaching procedures so I’d like to start planning that but I am attending a Harry Wong seminar next Wednesday so… I feel like I should really wait until after that to start those plans!
4. I have no idea how to start the year!

Another thing I would like to work on is finding a central place to store ideas.  I’ve dabbled with Livebinders and Bagit, but I’m not sure if they are what I’m looking for.  I think Livebinders might be the way to go.  I will have to play with it a little more to get a better idea of how I can use it.

One more thing on my mind during this “planning” stage is my online identity.  I really want to get more involved with PLN’s online and sharing this blog and twitter, etc. but I don’t know if I should use my name and info.  I am involved with things such as religion and sports that I don’t want mixed with my education stuff.  So I’m not sure what to do about that!  Update to this:  I started this same blog on WordPress, since I have a few personal ones here on Blogger. I ended up making a new gmail and twitter account and then I realized that I can use the new gmail account with Blogger.  WordPress looks all fun and fancy, but I might be more comfortable with blogger.