Starting Fresh

After 15 years teaching in the same setting, 2016 has brought with it a fresh start and a new challenge that tested my strength as an educator. Knowing the entire structure of my previous school added to the success of my program and made the decision even harder to leave. However in order to progress my career I needed to test my methods in a new setting.

Instantly I found myself lost. Going from a Mac environment to a windows environment tested my abilities to find myself around the directory. I never thought that it would be so difficult to even find the easiest of files. However this was always going to be the challenge. Administratively i was lost. I was not able to understand the structure of operations and found myself asking colleagues who do I ask for this and where do I take that. I completely found myself out of my depth and classes were yet to start.

Thankfully teaching balances employment and once lessons commenced I was able to find my comfort zone even though I knew not one child's name. With the use of IDOCEO I captured the pictures of each of my classes and six weeks in we are rocking. Adding quality to lessons with learning intentions, success criteria and challenge activities not only brought a sense of familiarity to my teaching but brought explicit curriculum and visible outcomes to my classes. Students have been enjoying unpacking their learning and I have equally enjoyed watching them guide their own journeys. 

Starting fresh is tough- It is character building and I will be honest in saying in the first few weeks I felt that I had completely lost myself. With two weeks left in term 1, I am almost there. Still plenty to do with reports, carnivals, swimming programs and parent teacher interviews but that is why we signed up to teaching. All these come with the job which guides my pathway of continual success.