Mid-Year Tune-Up

Time flies. It seems that just yesterday it was August and we were gearing up for the start of school. Now here we are at Christmas Break. In the blink of an eye, the second half of the year will be gone, too. Luckily, for educators we have a little quiet time before Christmas and after New Years. Take time for yourself. Find balance. Your family and health must come first. Now is the perfect opportunity for reflection and self-improvement.  

Here are some of the questions that we all need to be asking ourselves:

What is working? What has been successful? What goals have been met? Is this the educator that I want to be? What should I do more of?  What has been difficult? What has not gone as well as it could have? Where can I improve? What practices do I need to stop using immediately? What is my mid-year grade? 

Humor me with an exercise. Close your eyes. Wait a minute if you close your eyes you cannot continue to read my intriguing and life-changing blog (ha ha!). Don't close your eyes. Anyway, think of the educator you signed up to be. Think about the educator you dreamed of being. Think about the educator you want to be on January 3rd (or whenever your classes resume).  Is the educator you are envisioning comparable to the actual version? Surely you did not become a teacher to breed compliance, be boring, or suck the excitement out of children. Hopefully, you did not picture yourself as someone as captivating as Ben Stein's character in the 80's classic, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Most likely your dream was to be something similar to a teacher like Ron Clark, Dave Burgess, or Jaime Escalante. We hold these wonderful educators in high regard and they deserve our admiration. But the truth is we can all be like them. We can be our own version of them. I think that their secret isn't God given talent. Their secret is hard work, dedication, focus, and passion. These are all things we can emulate if we make that choice.  

So I encourage you to answer a few of the italicized questions above. Make a simple plan to improve in a few areas. Sharpen your saw. Stop doing the things you are not so proud of. Start doing more of the things that you are the most proud of. Be more animated. Smile and laugh more while you are teaching. Bring your passions into your classroom. Seize the attention of your students. Rock your classroom. Finish the year striving to be the teacher of your wildest dreams.