This New Year, I wanted to encourage you to manage your time, your busy time, your spare time and alone time. I can’t think of a better time to blog about this topic than now as we make new years resolutions for the up coming year ahead.

I can honestly say that if you organize your time well as a teacher, you will be able to have work during work hours and build your family and friendship lives separately and explore life the way you would like…

As a mentor or mentee at any given moment in your teaching career, time management skills will help you accomplish everything you want and not burn out in your profession. Remember it’s a career and you need to explore the learning opportunities, balance life and enjoy the moments as we teach daily. So, here are my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours…

Strategies that have worked for me!

  • Using a calendar that is user friendly
  • Goal setting weekly
  • Timed To Do List with daily, weekly and monthly goals

Plan with a Backwards Design in mind

  • Plan the ending of your lesson first.
  • Then plan your teaching goals.
  • Then plan the steps that will take you to the goal.
  • Consider student input in how you plan things out.
  • Set those learning goals for your students and lesson.

Maslow vs. Vygotsky vs. Bloom

  • Put the needs of the students first, with high expectations on what you expect them to do.
  • Remember all students have to feel like the belong to make significant contributions.
  • Let students guide the lesson pace and ideas.
  • Make the space so that you can advocate for your students.
  • Remember “RELATIONSHIPS” are the key.
  • Inquiry with gradual release of responsibility has been my secret to being successful.

It is always important to draw connections between Maslow’s basic needs to ensure they are met and Vygotsky’s learning expectations as we develop skills for students.

Photo credit: for the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs graphic.

Photo credit: for the  Blooms Taxonomy graphic.

 

Photo credit: for the Vygotsky’s philosophy graphic for Inquiry based learning.

We build amazing lesson expectations so that we can guide discussions and lead students to think with higher order thinking skills when approaching problems. We encourage students to look at situations that they face with a problem solving mentality in order to develop their comprehension skills, and resilience.

Reflection: What were your New Year’s resolutions as an educator? Write them down with timelines. SMART goal them. That’s my goal for you as a reader of my blog!

Yours in Education,

Nilmini

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