Teacher's Ultimate Planning Guide

How to Achieve a Successful School Year and Thriving Teaching Career

Lisa Maria Burke

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781632209863
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

High levels of stress are an occupational hazard of the teaching profession, resulting from inadequate training for the broad scope of teacher responsibilities that extend beyond instruction. This comprehensive guide masterfully fills this void by creating a step-by-step sequence of practical techniques—based on research on successful teaching, and grounded in real-life examples—guiding teachers toward an effective action plan for successful teaching and classroom management.The manual's concrete suggestions give teachers the skills and tactics they need to manage, control, and enrich their professional lives, with positive impacts and successes following beyond the classroom as well.Tackling major issues from designing effective lesson plans to maximizing limited resources, each chapter of this well-organized book begins with stated objectives and ends with a concise summary, making it easy to read, understand, and implement. It features a myriad of helpful hints that are invaluable in planning for the expected and the unexpected in the classroom, and in invigorating overall performance.Key value-added elements are: 13 easy-to-use resources, including lesson planning worksheets, calendar organizers, a substitute teacher kit, parent-teacher conferences reference, and a listing of professional organizations
"Success Tips" sections throughout that highlight proven methods for working efficiently and effectively
"True Stories" that punctuate and reinforce the techniques outlined
Targeted questions in each chapter that encourage personalized reflection and solutions

Section II

Your Action Plans

4

Determine Your Goals

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES

Before you can develop action plans, you need to know where you’re heading. Determining your personal, professional, instructional, and classroom climate goals gives you the direction you need.

The objectives of this chapter are to help you

• Clarify your personal and professional goals

• Identify your instructional goals

• Determine your classroom climate goals

YOUR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL GOALS: TAKE CONTROL

In Chapters 1 and 2, you examined your wants and needs. Now you can focus on clarifying your personal goals. You should consider them first because of their importance in helping you take control of your life, a key ingredient for a thriving teaching career.

What do you want to accomplish in your life? What do you want to accomplish this year in your teaching assignment? Look at where you are and where you want to go, and then answer the following questions:

4.1 What are your personal goals for the following areas of your life?

a. Physical health

b. Family and friends

c. Spirituality

d. Hobbies and interests

4.2 What are your professional goals?

a. What grade and subject do you want to teach?

b. What image do you want your students, parents, colleagues, and administrators to have of you?

c. How do you want to be remembered by your former students?

In addition to the broad professional goals you have just recorded, you might also have more specific professional goals. For example, this year you might want to learn more about using technology as a teaching tool, or you might want to become more involved in a professional teaching organization or association. Answer the following questions:

4.3 What do you want to learn this year?

4.4 Are there any professional teaching organizations or associations in which you would like to become more involved?

Your professional goals also include the things you would like to do with your class this year. All your teaching experiences so far have helped shape your opinions about what does and does not work for you and your students. As a result, you might have ideas about activities that you want to do this year.

4.5 Are there any activities you have done in the past that you would like to do again this year? would like to change this year? would not like to do at all this year?

4.6 Is there something new that you want to try this year with your students?

Every year I make new distinctions about what works in the classroom. And I know that what works with one group of students doesn’t always work with another group. Yet I am always eager to try new things. One example is using learning centers in the classroom. I had used centers effectively as a primary grade teacher. But in every school where I taught upper elementary grade levels, I found that centers were rarely used. So I decided to make centers an integral part of my third- through fifth-grade classes one year. I read many professional resources and spoke with other teachers about how they managed centers in their classrooms. Drawing on my experience teaching primary grades and some of the new ideas I had learned, I successfully integrated learning centers into my classes. The centers enhanced my teaching and improved my students’ achievement.

YOUR INSTRUCTIONAL GOALS: FULFILL CURRICULUM EXPECTATIONS

“My students will become lifelong learners.” “My students will get accepted into college.” “My students will learn the multiplication tables.” These are all excellent goals to strive for, but you have to ask yourself if these are goals you are expected to pursue. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are only reflections of your personal goals for your students. Having student goals that are not supported by your employer can be a cause for role ambiguity and role conflict. So be careful.

Remove any role ambiguity and role conflict by making sure you help your students reach the goals you were hired to help them achieve. If you choose to work toward different goals, you might place unnecessary pressure on yourself and on your students. Unnecessary pressure can lead to unwanted stress.

The simplest way to find the required goals is to consult your curriculum guides, standard course of study, grade-level proficiency lists, or scope and sequence charts. They should consist of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor goals for your students. If they do not exist or are incomplete, ask your colleagues, your principal, or your school system curriculum administrators. If there are no curriculum goals for your teaching assignment, find out the state and national guidelines, including standards and guidelines from national councils such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and others.

4.7 Using all the curriculum guides or other curriculum documents for your assigned teaching positions, determine the following:

a. Which parts of the curriculum are you responsible to teach?

b. What are your curriculum goals?

If there are any parts of the curriculum documents that appear vague, ask your principal and colleagues for clarification. For example, if they state students must learn to write legibly but do not specify the exact style of handwriting, find out from your principal or colleagues which style the school or district recommends that you teach.

Often there is miscommunication among teachers, students, and parents when it comes to using the word writing. When speaking with students and parents, make sure you explain that writing is the process of creating a story, essay, letter, and so forth, whereas handwriting or penmanship are the proper words used to signify the actual skill of forming letters, either in print or in cursive.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to identify curriculum goals based solely on the curriculum documents. You also need to look at your students. You might be assigned students who either have not achieved the prerequisite skills needed to be successful in your class or have already achieved the goals you have outlined here. In either case, you might need to modify some of the goals on your list for certain students. The goals you establish must be appropriate for each student you teach.

Examine your students’ permanent records and identify any students who might need modified goals. Any student who has an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or equivalent probably needs modified or additional goals.

4.8 Are there any curriculum goals that need to be modified for your students?

a. Which students?

b. Which goals need modification?

c. Do these students need any additional goals?

If you use small-group instruction, use different-colored markers to highlight in your lesson plan book how often you meet with each group during the week. Check to make sure you are spending an equitable, not necessarily equal, amount of time with each group.

YOUR CLASSROOM CLIMATE GOALS: NURTURE HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

To have a successful school year, you also need to establish a classroom climate that supports an effective learning environment. Climate is all about relationships—the emotional health of the relationships among a group of people. Climate, therefore, is the atmosphere or tone created by the emotional health of the relationships that exist among the members of your classroom and those that exist between your classroom and everyone else. As the teacher, you have tremendous control over your classroom climate.

Discipline problems, cited as a major stressor for most teachers, play a significant role in classroom climate. Discipline problems result when students use inappropriate behaviors to deal with demands or expectations placed on them. Students feel pressured into a corner and try to get out any way they know how—from fighting to daydreaming. Discipline problems erode the emotional health of those involved and of bystanders. These problems become a strain on the classroom climate. When they occur, you need to have the skills to deal with the inappropriate behavior. Many of these skills are discussed in Chapter 7. There is a wealth of resources you can use to learn these skills; check your school’s professional library and stores that sell teacher resources.

As the classroom leader, you have the power to create a climate that can help you prevent stress. Use the following questions to help you identify your climate goals and to determine if you are committed to this very important stress prevention strategy:

4.9 What is your current classroom climate like? What has your past classroom climate been like?

4.10 What are your climate goals for this school year?

4.11 What are your school’s climate goals? How do your climate goals support the school’s climate goals?

Are you calling on girls and boys at equal rates? Find out if you are by nonchalantly placing a paper clip in your right pocket every time you call on a girl and a paper clip in your left pocket every time you call on a boy. Most students won’t notice what you are doing, and you’ll have your answer at the end of the day.

SUMMARY

Identifying your personal, professional, instructional, and classroom climate goals is the first step in creating action plans for a successful school year and a thriving teaching career. These goals drive the actions you take to become an effective, successful teacher.

5

Your Schedule: The Framework for Your Action Plans

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES

How much time you have to create and execute your action plans is determined by your daily schedule. As the framework of your action plans, a carefully recorded daily schedule is the key to examining how to maximize your planning time so you can achieve your instructional and climate plans.

The objectives of this chapter are to help you

• Prioritize your activities so you can achieve your personal and professional development goals

• Examine and record school and student schedules as well as your teaching schedule

• Analyze your planning time

• Maximize your planning time through effective time management strategies

CAN YOU MAKE TIME TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS?

Perhaps the real question is, can you afford not to make the time to achieve your goals? A successful school year and thriving teaching career depend on your ability to work toward your goals. Making the time to work toward all your goals—personal, professional, instructional, and climate—allows you to lead a balanced life, a requisite for stress-free teaching. Therefore, consider the following guidelines when creating your schedule:

• Keep a steady, comfortable pace; don’t try to do everything in one day.

• Use time wisely, especially the hours you are at school.

• Build buffers into your schedule to accommodate unforeseen delays and help ensure that you meet deadlines.

• Coordinate personal and school events so that you are not involved in too many highly stressful situations at once.

• Stay as organized as you can to help you feel less overwhelmed and more in control of your time.

• Be flexible and understand that you might need to rearrange your schedule as the days and weeks go by.

Control your time by carefully planning your daily activities. To help you allocate enough time for the important things you need and want to do, photocopy Resources 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 in the Resources for Successful Teaching section. As you read the rest of this chapter, use these resources to record your scheduled activities an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Adcard
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Introduction. The Successful Teacher: What Research Tells Us
• Section I. The First Steps
• Section II. Your Action Plans
• Section III. Your Momentum
• Epilogue. Enabling Successful Teaching: What Educational Leaders at All Levels Must Know
• Resources for Successful Teaching
• Bibliography
• Index