New Year Renewed Teacher

Wednesday Afternoon Post 08-15-12 Beginning a new school year is a job experience wherein teachers are granted a rare experience. We stand at the perspective of reviewing our own past job performance with the ability to change, renew, and enhance our upcoming year. Every school year is a new beginning and opportunity to become better teachers. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of dusting off lesson plans and recycling them for yet another year. We grow stale when our minds are bored and sameness breeds boredom. Unfortunately for our students, boredom is contagious. Twenty-five years ago I was a new teacher entering my first classroom. I remember how excited I was to see “my” desks waiting in rows for instruction. I spent several days putting up posters and bulletin boards, keeping stacks of index cards and working on those all important lesson plans. I was too excited to sleep the night before that all important first day. I like to remember that feeling of so many years ago and bring some of the anticipation and excitement of new beginnings with me to the first day of a new school year. Like the elementary school child, I shop for a few new school supplies to add to my cabinet. I seek new ways to present lessons that work. How can I make them work better? What goals will I focus on for my students this year? What one new strategy will I try this year? When we give ourselves new start up challenges, we are stretched to invent new paradigms to frame our teaching styles and skill levels. This in itself is renewing and the excited anticipation we bring to our students is fortunately also contagious.