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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Fresh Start

Another school year is underway at PCHS. This is my seventh year of teaching, and I am always excited for the first days of school, and I think you should all be excited too. For me, the beginning of the school year is more significant the start of a new calendar year. On January 1st, many people wake up looking at the new year as an opportunity to make changes, better themselves. We make resolutions for the changes we want to make in our lives. As a teacher, my life revolves around the school calendar more than it does the standard calendar; for me, New Year's Day is halfway through the year, not the beginning of it! By New Year's Day, we've already put in a full semester of work, so each August, I begin thinking about myself as a teacher. What I have I done in the past that I am happy about? What I have done in the past that I'm not so happy about? What worked in my classroom? What did not? I start every year by making resolutions about the kind of teacher I want to be this year. I set goals for my own improvement. Here are the goals I have for myself this year:

-I want to blog more often. As a teacher and father of three young children, I don't have much time for traditional hobbies like golfing or going fishing. Truth is, I haven't done those things enough to even know if I would enjoy doing them more often. I'm not very good at either one, and I don't really have the time or resources necessary to get better at this point in time. By most accounts, though, I am a pretty good writer, and I enjoy doing it. It doesn't require an incredible amount of time, and I have all that I need to accomplish it sitting right here at my fingertips, so I resolve to blog much more often than I have the last few years. I think that putting my thoughts out for students and parents to read gives them more insight into who I am as a person and what I am trying to accomplish in my classroom.

-I want to continue to get better at communicating with parents. As soon as I finish this blog, I am going to start the tedious task of creating email lists of students and parents for each of my classes (no small task with 7 classes and about 150 students). After that, I will be sending out mass emails to both students and parents with information about how to stay in contact with me and access course information. I know that not every parent uses email on a regular basis, but I have found that enough of them do to make the effort worthwhile. This is something that I have done will during some semesters but not so well in others. I resolve to do a good job of it both semesters this year.

-I want to do a better job of creating a culture in my classroom for students to not only feel comfortable getting extra help from me, but also to make sure that process is easier for kids. I think that I am going to try to create extra help sessions each week focusing on specific topics so that students can show up for help in those areas at those times. For example, I may have a time set up every Monday after school to focus on grammar for 30 minutes. There may be a 30 minute session on Thursday for organization and study skills. I plan to include students in coming up with times and topics, so feel free to leave me a comment with your suggestions.

-I want to continue to get better at getting feedback to students in a timely manner. Last year was probably the best I've ever done at getting assignments graded, posted on MMS, and back to students quickly, but I want to continue to get better at that. For some assignments, this is very easy. For others, I'm going to have to really buckle down to make it happen. With 100 students enrolled in English II, grading 100 essays is going to take some time, but my goal is to get those essays graded within 10 days, which means grading an average of 10 essays each day. It will be hard, but resolutions are not meant to be easy. If it were easy, we wouldn't have to resolve to do it, right?

-I want to continue to be the change. With Challenge Day coming back this year, I'm excited to continue to see our school culture improve, and I know that I have a great responsibility as a teacher to be a big part of that change. I see you, I've got you, and I love you.

There you have it: my five resolutions for this school year. I know I will not accomplish all of these things all of the time. There will be weeks when I am worn out from the daily grind of school and raising a family. There will be weeks when I have meetings after school that get in the way of accomplishing some of these tasks. A little over a year ago, I began trying to live a healthier lifestyle. I started paying more attention to what I was putting in my body and resolved to exercise more. A year later, I can see the difference in my weight, body composition, and overall health. This process has taught me a lot. Have I met my goals every day for the last year? No. There are still days when I eat too much junk food or skip the trip to the gym, but if I continue to work on those goals and have more good days than bad, I will move forward. The resolutions I have for this school year are the same. There will be days or weeks when I don't accomplish some of these goals, but if I have more good weeks than bad, I will be a better teacher at the end of the year than I am right now.

For my students reading this, what are your resolutions for this school year? What kind of student do you want to be when we arrive at the end of the year? What will it take to accomplish that goal? I want you to try to come up with five goals for yourself. Instead of focusing on a grade you want to get, focus on the behavior it would take to earn that grade. For instance, instead of saying "I want to get all A's", resolve to turn every assignment in on-time to the best of your ability, to ask for help when you don't understand an assignment or concept, to participate fully in every class, etc.. Understand that there will be days that you don't feel like participating, and that is fine, but if you try to meet your goals every day, you will be far better off than if you aren't trying at all, even if you sometimes fall short. I look forward to accomplishing our goals together.

38 comments:

  1. Two of my main goals this year is to be on honor-roll all four quarters. To achieve this goal, I will have to make sacrifices. I will have to lose a bit of sleep and manage my school time. I also want to be "less stressed" when it comes to school. Usually around the time of finals is when I am very stressed. Hopefully whenever that time comes around I will be able to control it better.
    Samantha Moore 8th Hour

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  2. my goals may be much more broad than everyone else. I have the main goals to get my stuff done, and not have failing classes. During the couse of this year, a couple of my grades have dropped and i have been ineligible. Now i have brought those up and they still arent perfect. However, i have been going in and trying to get those raised which i feel like has helped twice as much as anything else, and helped get those grades raised. As long as i can make these grades up to the point in which i feel accomplished, that will be meeting my goal.
    -Dawson Myers

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  3. I knew at the beginning of this school year what I wanted to change and/or keep the same from last school year. I knew I wanted to remain on Honor Roll all four quarters, once again. I want to try my hardest to earn all A's for my semester grades this year. I want to set aside time every night to do my homework, whether it is due the very next day or not. Lastly, I want to get even more involved in my school activities. To be able to accomplish all of these, I might have to give up a little bit of sleep, some time with my friends, and be more focused on what I am going to be able to accomplish in the end, and not just what I want now, here in the moment.
    -Faith Fox, 1st Hour

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  4. My big school resolution for this year is to make it out with more knowledge and maturity than I had when I came in the first day of sophomore year. I think that if I try hard on every assignment, do well on everything I hand in, take the time to do it ahead and get my work revised, take my thorough time on all my work and seek knowledge in class every day than I will be able to accomplish this.
    -Griffin Johnson, 4th hour

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  5. I have many goals as a student this year. One of my biggest goals is to be on Honor Roll all four quarters this year. I know this is a hard goal and will take work to be achieved. This can be stressful trying to get grades but I will try my best to do so! I also might have to make some sacrifices to do so. One for an example could be going to be at 12 one night because that is what I have to do to get all my homework done.Hopefully that I can achieve this goal!!
    -Jacob Graham, 8th Hour

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  6. I have many goals for myself this year. One of my bigger goals is to get the best grades I can. I'm not going to say that I am going to get straight A's because that is not always possible. However, I can at least try my very best to get as good of grades as I can. To do so, I will pay attention in my classes and participate anytime I can. I also want to try to better myself as a person. To do this, I will try to help others whenever I see them in a time of need.
    -Lindsey Pitts, 6th Hour

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  7. I personally think that anyone and everyone should shoot their highist for goals that they can reach. No matter how hard your trying I feel as if you can always do better. I set goals to make honoral and I am so far. Im doing great this year and i will still try to make goals so i can achieve them. -Cheylynn Ford 3rd hour

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  8. I feel like in the beginning of the year i didnt want to actually try and now that everything has clicked in and im not doing as well as i wanted to be at this point i need to actually step up. senior year is a lot harder than i thought it was going to be.

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  9. I don't know if I can come up with 5 goals, but I do know my priority now is to be a better communicator not only at school but with my family and friends.

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  10. My goals for this school year would be to communicate better with my teachers. Last year if I did not understand something I just blew it off and didn't think it would be too important. As a result, my grades would sometimes get hurt because I was too afraid or didn't feel like putting the effort out to ask questions. To accomplish this I am going to pay better attention in class and always ask questions if I do not understand something or come in and get help. Hopefully this will help me to gain more knowledge and make my grades right.

    -Lydia Switzer 1st hour

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  11. Five goals.. I can come up with them right off the top of my head. 1) I want to be more respectful to people. I've found that if you treat them with kindness, the contagious feeling of happiness will spread to others and that's what this world needs. 2) Be more aware of my actions; quite simply, Do the right thing more then other times. 3) Be a Leader, I've been doing my best to have a leadership attitude about me at all times. 4) As cliché as it sounds, I want to do a lot better at homework in general. I have the potential to get Straight A's, just sometimes I have this "ehh, I don't feel like it" attitude and I need to quit. 5) Lastly, Have more tolerance for my Family, I don't give them enough praise for all the wonderful things they do for me on a daily basis and I need to show this more. If I had given my family more time of the day to just sit down and talk, my life would be 10x better.

    That's all I have to say about that, and I hope I can accomplish this.

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  12. I am glad to see everyone has goals for themselves because I'm still not sure what mine would be. Going into the year mine were just make it through, don't get in too much trouble, and don't get arrested. Those standards are pretty low if I do say so myself. Moving on into the year I have had some problems to say the least and now mine are making a sudden change. I know I need to try but I'm making up my mind, do I want to get through? Or do I wanna do my homework right, crush tests, and make all A's?

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  13. I set goals for myself all the time. I may not accomplish them all the time but I try and push myself to max to accomplish my goals I set for myself. Some of my goals include: Respecting others even when they disrespect me; I have a really hard time trying to accomplish this one, but it is worth a shot. Make straight A's, I have a hard time getting this goal even though I give Anatomy my 100% I still pull at least a B but I would be much happier if I had more time to work on things and had more homework that away when it comes to those huge tests I still have another shot to build my grade back up from the homework. My other goal is to be polite, I am polite almost all the time, I do not just ignore someone or tell them what to do I do not shove nor speak of others behind their back. We all know, word gets around so why not just simply confront them instead of jumping to conclusions.

    Meghan Bell- 3rd Hour

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  14. It is cool to see how many people have goals for them self that are not just school related. Goals are very important to many people. With out goals, some people just go crazy. I know I would.

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  15. At the beginning of the year I set my goal to try harder in my classes and to get better grades. As first semester is coming to an end I can say that I have been showing improvements on this goal, working harder and turning in my assignments on time has paid off a lot in the end and I am happy with what type of student I am this year.
    -Brittany Smith, 6th hour

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  16. I think the beginning of a new school year is great for everyone. We all let go of the old things that were holding us back the previous year and can accomplish whatever we set our minds to!

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  17. I think the beginning is a truly amazing thing you get a second chance to change anything you want about yourself and your past academic career and that is a truly amazing thing!
    McKinley

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  18. The beginning of the year is a great time to set goals for yourself. It's a completely fresh start, so you must take advantage of it. Whether your goal is to do better in school or to be nicer to people, it is always good to set them because you'll be constantly reminded to take smarter actions.
    -Blake German, 5th Hour

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  19. The beginning of the year is alot like the beginning of a new sports season if you wanna look at like that. You have to set certain goals and prepare yourself for the long nights ahead that are going keep you in bed the next morning but you got to keep pushing forward. So in the end my school year approach is like my approach towards the sports season go for the grind and push through but try your hardest.
    Josh Seibert 6th Hour

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  20. so just focusing on the first two don't you ever think about what your kids might think about fishing or maybe you can take them to put put golf maybe you will have fun and they will have fun and that email to the parents really help them keep up on their child's work- matt walker

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  21. I love fresh starts to the new year. It gives you decision to change your life around or even become a new you. You practically get a second chance. It is such an amazing thing!

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  22. School is always fun at the beginning and the first day when you see all of your friends all at once is fun. The goals I had at the beginning of the year I have been working and have achieved.
    Colton Dosch

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  23. The beginning of school is the best time of the school year in my opinion because there is no stress about turning in assignments or anything like that. It is basically just hanging out with friends for at least the first couple days.
    Jackson Feltt-6th hour

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  24. I don't really have any set goals regarding school other than to pass all of my classes. Honestly it doesn't really matter if I get all D's or all A's. Either way I'm still going to graduate and I will still get my diploma.

    -Thomas Rozman

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  25. The prime time to set goals for myself is at the beginning of volleyball season which is in the summer. During the summer I have to balance having a job, volleyball conditioning, and volunteering at Union. So to do this I have to prioritize each thing and set different goals for each one and then it simply carries on into the school year

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  26. My goals for this school year is turning my work in on time and getting it done. Not to be afraid to ask questions in class or even talk to a teacher. Another goal is keeping my job and getting school done together. I have to learn to be responsible with all of my goals and life.
    -Alexis Miller

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  27. I want to branch out of my anxiety this year and be more active in my school life. I also want to be the student that cheers others up when they aren't so happy.. and I'm getting better!

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  28. I am off to a late start ( really late ) but im going to try harder to try harder next semester and turn in my work and if I don't understand something I will ask

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  29. When I started school this year, I wanted to be an honor roll student. Obviously, I am far past the point to even receive that for this semester. By the end of this year, I want to be a more accomplished student, one who is willing to do all my work, no matter how hard or time consuming it will be. So, what I am going to be doing to achieve my goal is just to simply do my work.

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  30. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  31. Two of my goals or resolutions if you will, are to be on honor roll all four quarters and to communicate with my teachers to the best of my ability. With the help from them and my own personal effort, I will be able to reach those goals.

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  32. Hum.... I could maybe try harder than I do and I do realize that I am on the lazy side of things when it comes to school. I may get behind but I always pull out but I do realize that this is not how it can go in the real world. I want to be out of school to have a new start in life. My goals are to be in the Marines, which I am basically already in. I have sworn in the last I was at mepps. I want to pass my classes so my teachers do not have to see me again and so I will not be considered a drop out. Phillip Collier 6th

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  33. My resolutions for next year's school year is to actually put some effort into classes. Yes I do my homework and get good grades, but I know I have more potential than what I am showing. I am going to try to quit doing my homework in homeroom the morning of and stop being too lazy to study for tests.

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  34. My resolutions for next year's school year is to actually put some effort into classes. Yes I do my homework and get good grades, but I know I have more potential than what I am showing. I am going to try to quit doing my homework in homeroom the morning of and stop being too lazy to study for tests.

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  35. Next year is my senior year at PCHS and itll be at the new high school. a new school and my last year, it needs to be different than the rest. from freshman year my grades have been getting better and better, i might actually pass english! probably not but i vow to do my best next year. high school has been a learning experience and i'm ready to show what i have learn the last 3 years. my resolution is to be the student i know i can and will be.

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  36. Next year is my senior year at PCHS and itll be at the new high school. a new school and my last year, it needs to be different than the rest. from freshman year my grades have been getting better and better, i might actually pass english! probably not but i vow to do my best next year. high school has been a learning experience and i'm ready to show what i have learn the last 3 years. my resolution is to be the student i know i can and will be.

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  37. For this next school year I am going to work harder and put more effort in. I have always received pretty good grades but I know I could be a lot better if I would put in more effort. If I studied more for tests, not just during the class before or in the few minutes the teacher may give us before the test begins. If I studied harder at home I would be more successful. Also, if I did not procrastinate so much to do my homework I would be better because my assignments would get done with better quality.
    Brenna Aitken

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  38. I find it complicated when thinking of resolutions for this school year. I do not think of myself as a failure although in many classes that is apparent. Perhaps it is my attitude, or maybe I am just lazy when it comes to school work? I’m not really sure but I do now realize that I do not want to fail. I want to stand proud and receive my diploma with my Friends and classmates. I must change in order for my grades to change. I must resolve to turn in my assignments. I must resolve to ask for help when I do not understand. I must resolve to
    pay more attention in class so that I can better comprehend the teachings. I must resolve to
    work harder even when I do not feel like it, until it becomes routine for me. I am ready to listen, I am ready to learn.

    Austin Fullerton 2nd Hour

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