So this is the start of my Reflective Teaching: 30-Day Blogging Challenge for teachers from teachthought.com

Here is the link to the site with the 30-day challenge. 
http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/reflective-teaching-30-day-blogging-challenge-teachers/



Day 1. Write your goals for the school year. 

Being a former English Teacher, you would think that I would love such an open-ended question. I should be able to rouse up a creative opening that has to do with new beginnings, opening new doors and any other cliche I can think of. However, this question makes a little nervous seeing that there are so many different directions I can take it.

Just this past year I switched roles, left the classroom and became the technology facilitator for Buffalo Grove High School. Originally, I was excited to take on this new challenge. It seemed like it was the prefect time in my career to make a change and do something different. However, with the new freedoms that this job offered, I noticed that my responsibilities had significantly changed.

The structure of being a teacher was nice:

1st Hour American Lit
2nd Hour AP Lit Section 1
3rd Hour AP Lit  Section 2
4th Hour Lunch

....You get the idea.

Although, as teachers, we complain about being "bound by the bells," there was some comfort knowing that I was "told" where to be at every single moment of the day.

Nonetheless, the ability to manage my own time is liberating and terrifying all at the same time. I have the freedom now to research, reflect and collaborate more so now than I ever have before, but I think there is a part of me that misses the bells.

So, I don't think that I can say that I have several "goals" (except what I have on my Danielson Rubric of course), but rather a desire to enhance the ability to teach of those around me. Sure, I miss the classroom a little bit, but in the end I know that the enrichment that I can give to other teachers in my building and around my district far exceeded what I could ever do on a day with bells.