What is equitable may not be equal

As a parent of 2 children I battle with equality all the time. Making sure I spend equal amounts of time, energy (and money) with, and on, both children. Coming in to teaching I felt that children deserve equal amounts of my time and energy and so I would be torn when that small group of children were given all my attention, whilst the larger group got minimal.
I am beginning to realise that actually, the amount of time and energy I spend on a child should be based on their needs rather than some sort of tally, clocking in system that I have in my head.
This is hard for me, and whilst I do it, what I need to do is get rid of the guilt over the lack of attention some children may get from me. At the end of the day, over the course of a year, the tally chart in my head will probably look very similar for most children, with the odd outlier on either side - a bit of a bell curve. If I'm supporting the needs of those who demand more of me, and I design the learning to suit them, then in theory all children should benefit and be better of for it.
Here's hoping for a guilt free year!

Appraisal Reflection

No matter what you call an appraisal it is still daunting – RSG (Reflect, Sharn and Grow) was a good way to think about it but at the end of the day I was still nervous!

The points that came out of it;

·      Acknowledgment and appreciation of my input into the team – taking it to the next level

·      Praise for demonstrating my understanding of the school’s values

·      Thanks for setting up systems for tracking student achievement – which I really enjoyed doing – my blue/green side coming out!

·      My goals have been aligned to the Shotover Teacher Criteria which gives me clear guidelines

·      Focus on relationships will continue

o   Immediate team is staying the same; which is awesome as these relationships have already been established.

o   New staff to connect with (and other habitat mentors)

o   New families and children to build relationships

§  Will use some release time to start this with children

·      Behaviour management is going to be a priority for me as I believe that to be effective you need good strong links with the children

·      Curriculum area to focus on will be Writing

o   Lots of goals in this area – making the progressions cognitively portable is a priority so I can confidently talk about next steps with the children

I was really happy with my appraisal and I feel valued and appreciated. I need to think of ways to support my professional development and development of my teaching.

Reflection on Term 4, 2015

·      Meetings, meetings and more meetings

·      Pressure of report writing

o   Also getting to know where my mentor group are academically

o   Writing accurate comments in the collaborative plans to help others

·      Lots going on – swimming, jet boat, walk safe, outdoor ed

·      Trying to stay on top of everything (until I wrote this I didn’t realise how much we had going on!)

·      Collaboratively planning

o   Good seeing what others are doing

o   My green/blue side needs lots of detail

·      Planning for individual needs

o   Developing behavioural plans (NW)

o   Frustrations when things don’t work

·      Owl and Eagle roles more defined

o   Plans for next year (5 weeks in each role)

·      Team teaching for writing

o   Fantastic way of giving all learners what they need

·      Setting up of Learning Centres

o   Be good to have a long term plan for each centre and get more feedback from children as to what they like / don’t like

·      Missed several BT days – illness, Wedding

·      Missed meetings with Claire – same as above plus family commitments

o   Realise how important Claire’s input and guidance is to me

·      Data analysis on WoRM

o   Enjoyed it and think we can do more with our data

What to do differently

·      Depends on how we do reporting next year

o   Hopefully not a big end of year, but more comments throughout the year

o   If the same then happy with how I did the reports with;

§   Earlier guidance on structure

§  Review notes from this year about specific language

§  Keep in mind “help at home” needs to be related to specific goals

·      Keep up with reflections and blog

o   Knowing that they don’t have to be essays!

·      Analyse data more regularly

·      As a team, not try to achieve quite as much!!

o   We can move forwards with what we’ve learnt from this term

·      Keep on top of adminy things like filing photos

·      Not try to do quite so much

o   Want to follow through with things I said i’d do, but then they are more time consuming than anticipated!