The Fourth Year

During the first class I took to become a teacher, the professor took half of the class out and informed us that after four years of teaching half us of will have left teaching all together. Now I'm well into my fourth year and I'm still standing.

In fact, I feel that this year is going to be...

For starters, I have officially started my Master's in Educational Technology. I'm only a few weeks in and, while I'm overwhelmed and stressed, I'm glad that I'm finally taking the next steps in my education. It also helps that one of my amazing friends is doing it with me!

I'm also blessed to be going into my second year at Minarets High School, which continues to be my dream school. As many people said, the first year was me trying to drink out of a fire hose, but now I feel confident and ready to be 100% PBL in a 21st century school. Over the summer, I participated in the EdtechTeam's Teacher Leader Certification and becoming inspired to set new goals for myself as a teacher:
  • I completely reorganized my classroom in order to make it an effective third teacher. I want my room to foster students' creating, student centered, and creative so I completely redesigned it from it last year. Here is a 360 of last year's design and pictures from this year's design:
  • During the PBL unit, I realized that many of the projects that I did with students were not very engaging or exciting for them. I've decided to make it my goal to make my projects and driven questioning as engaging as possible, especially if I can provide an authentic audience for my students. In fact, at the start of the year I had students do a gallery talk and brainstorm what they wanted out of this year, including what topics in history they wanted to study. Many wanted to look at older societies that I don't typically cover so I decided to revamp my first world history project so that it would include the students' interests. I'm also incredibly excited because the majority of my World History students are passionate about history and are excited to get started. 
  • While not part of the EdtechTeam's program, I also want to have students using their brand new Macbook Airs to its full potential by using high level and professional programs. 
Finally, I'm working on my Innovator project to make my Parent Edtech Conference a reality for the first time this year at Minarets. My principal is enthusiastically on board and I'll keep everyone updated as the idea progresses.  

I hope everyone's year is off to an epic start as well. What are some goals you have for yourself this year? 

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