We're off and running...

There are some really great answers to the questions I posed - nice work! You are correct, they are very loaded, but I did that on purpose. I think sometimes you can ask a question that won't necessarily get answered, but in the attempt to answer some really interesting stuff emerges. And that's what has happened!

I'm not sure it's necessary to respond to everything you wrote at this moment, but there are a couple interesting points that I would like to touch on.

First - I think your comments about goals for the spring are interesting. What I read in that section is two levels of goals. There are the goals that pertain to your classroom practice and everyday actions with students, and goals that are performance or time-line based. I think your concern for the progress of students with IEPs and male students of color are admirable. Do you think it's possible to state these goals more specifically as a safe guard against excluding other students in your teaching? What I mean is, I think your goals are great but I would want to make sure that you don't become too focused on specific groups of students. It's tricky! And I don't expect you to be able to articulate your exact thoughts, but be aware of how you attend to students as the weeks progress and see if you are able to offer the one-to-one help you wish to. The bottom line is that effective and equitable attention is something that will take time for you as a teacher to develop.

The second level of goals, the performance or time-line based goals are also important. We talked about lesson planning and perhaps instead of having everything planned out by Sunday night, we compromise. I think having Mon-Wed clearly defined with Thurs-Fri sketched out (but kept flexible) is a very reasonable place to start. What do you think? Have you talked with Joy about this? Also, the goal of having 5 students pursue honors is great! Perhaps you should chat with Joy about that and see whether even more is reasonable? She is a great resource and your relationship with her seems fantastic, so take advantage!!

I would like to get back to your points of anxiety, nervousness, etc. - but we'll do that later. For now, how about addressing these three questions in the next post:

1. What do you think are your strengths as a teacher?
2. What do you think are your weaknesses?
3. Can you propose ideas for how your strengths may help to develop your weaknesses?

2 days in and we've already tackled A LOT!! Going great though, so: