Saturday, September 15, 2018

Keep the Focus: Know Your Goals

School life can pull you in multiple directions, and it's important to have a clear focus on where you want and need to go so that you don't get lost in that sea of opportunity and activity.

As I think of this, I am reminded of my goals this year:
  • provide effective individual and collective feedback and student coaching in math.
  • integrating social-emotional learning into science and STEAM teaching.
I've chosen these goals for the following reasons. One way that I am able elevate students' math learning and success is to elevate my ability to positively coach each math learner with optimal coaching which includes effective feedback. I will use Darling-Hammond and Cook-Harvey's recent research article as my initial resource as to how to do this and where to go. As for integrating social-emotional learning into science and STEAM learning, I know that increased teamwork and social/emotional learning will empower students ability to learn the material, innovate, work with one another, and solve meaningful problems. I will use a number of resources including a book I wrote with colleagues, Integrating SEL into the Academic Program.

I'm looking forward to digging into these goals in the year ahead, and to do this well, I need to stay clear of the multiple pulls that don't contribute to this good work. Onward.