When 20 Days = 1 year

Over the summer I had set 4 goals for myself for the 2013-2014 school year (they are listed below).  Well, my school year did not last as long as I had anticipated - I only taught 20 days instead of the regular 180.  As many of you know I have moved to a district edtech TOSA position where I will be working with a team of people to help train teachers to use technology in their classrooms - and we are getting ready for CCSS.  So anyway, since my official school year is over...I thought I would reflect back the 2013-2014 year in review (all 20 days of it)...

Here were the four goals I set for myself at the beginning of the school year - and my success level for each during my 20 days:

1. Be in class

This was a big one since I had missed 18% of the school days last year!  Well I am happy to report that I had perfect attendance this year :)  Sure, it was only 20 days - but I was asked to go to two meetings and a training during that time and I said no to all three so I could be there for the students (before I left them).

2. Blogging
Oops!  The goal was to blog twice a week - that just did not happen.  My last blog was on Aug 25th!  That means that during my 20 days of teaching I only blogged one time.  I would count that as a total failure - or as the students say "Epic Fail".  I keep thinking that  my new position will give me new topics to blog about...so we'll see if I can get to blogging more often.

3. Flipping the classroom
This was both successful and not - if that is possible.  I created all the videos and I posted them online for students to view.  But since I knew I was only going to be in the classroom for a few weeks I decided not to do a full flipped classroom model.  I taught the "old fashioned" way but gave students access to my at  home lectures if they wanted.  Some students loved the ability to re-watch lessons - others never clicked on the link.  Overall I think it would have been awesome...but I didn't have the best situation to try it out.

4. Going paperless (or using less paper)
I'm going to count this as a success.  I did not make a copy until my second to last day on the job this year...and that was a common assessment that I had to give on paper :(  My syllabus, safety contract, 5 labs, two study guides, 4 activities and 2 tests were all paperless!  I do have a confession to make though - I was using printed out sheets of paper from last year...like the lab sheets from last year were used again this year.  So during my 20 days in the classroom (including 3 prep days) I only used 172 sheets of paper!  I had to print out 150 sheets for the common assessment (I had some left over from last year for the other 30 students - large class sizes!) and I printed out my roster (12 pages) and my seating charts - twice because I move the students once (5 pages).