Building My Motivation

There are moments where I find it difficult to believe that I am going back to a second year. When the stress of school is overwhelming, even in the midst of summer.

In an effort to improve my outlook, some things I'm looking forward to this year.

• Being more prepared than last year.
• Already having established favorite resources while planning. (If you want more, look at my del.icio.us account--it's listed over to the side.)
• New math teacher.
• Greater motivation to collaborate with new math teacher. (We'll be living together, so my guess is it will be hard to avoid.)
• Introducing class blogs. (Planning to be a teacher-centered list of resources. I can't count on students having a constant phone, never mind internet access. But I can publish websites where you can practice and set students to work on them when they come in for tutoring.)
  
• Hope that as a returning teacher, I'll have better relationships with students.
• This year's precalculus class--I already know most of the students who will be in it and they know me.
  
• Word-problem warm-up journals.
• Teaching organization skills through notebooks.
• More groupwork for discovery lessons.
• Having actual discovery lessons.
• Knowing more about how different manipulatives work.
• Hearing back from last year's seniors. (Though I'm afraid they'll be like campers and not really keep me updated as much as I'd like.)
• Creating studentwork that can decorate our classroom.
• Being more of a stickler about teaching what the class should be, not falling back to where students were left behind. Running with them to catch up.

I've got some of my motivation back for the moment. At least, I'm feeling positive enough to make it through the rest of the night.

I'll be out of town celebrating my grandmother's 80th birthday for the next week. After that, I'll drive back across the country to start in-service. Here's to savoring the break of summer so that there's energy enough come fall.