Sharing Positives and Negative about this Year

SO...I want to apologize for not posting anything in quite some time, but I am planning on getting back to posting more. First, if you are an educator I hope you took the advice from my previous post and had a summer of relaxation and enjoyment and came back to your profession as strong and rejuvenated as ever. Now that we are in November now, and two days away from Thanksgiving break I wanted to just share some of the positives and negatives that I have seen so far this year, in my own teaching.

Negatives

- Let me start with some concerns regarding my teaching flaws. I feel that when people begin to improve their flaws they will then be able to feel a better self-worth. In my opinion, if you always focus on your strengths then you are not allowing yourself to improve.

1) Getting Students involved with health: One issue, my Co-Teacher, @SarahCaseyPE and I see on a constant basis is students having a negative attitude towards our brand new Health Program. We are constantly working on ways to make it more appealing to them and one way we did this was through Project Based Learning. Having this style of learning taking place in the Health Room really gives students 1) An opportunity to work at their own pace 2) More options for them to choose from 3) The freedom to be as creative as they want to be. We had to change our method of 1 week in P.E./1 week in Health to a full 9 weeks in Health at a time and the students are just not ready to jump on the train. It's a process but I feel we have worked and gotten it in a position where we can create success.

2) My ability to handle failure: One area that I need to be more comfortable with is knowing that my students will fail at times, I will fail at times, and my lessons will fail at times. With the direction my school is going, regarding Project Based Learning and having an Innovators Mindset, we are really pushing for our faculty to integrate new ideas. With new ideas there will come a time when not everything will be perfect and being okay with that or just saying "well that didn't work" is perfectly fine. If we did not fail we would not be able to learn from our mistakes so we can grow as educators.

Positives

1) Continuing my education: The very first positive that I wanted to bring up is that I will be continuing my education. I will be pursuing a Master's Degree in Education Administration (another topic I plan to cover) this spring. A goal of mine is to eventually become an Administrator and by earning this degree it will bring me one step closer to reaching that goal.

2) Having someone great to work with: Not everything is going to go as planned but I work with another amazing P.E. teacher! With this being our second year together, I feel we are getting to a place where we are really beginning to click. Having someone you cant count on or consult with is something that I did not have my first couple years of teaching (I was the only P.E. Teacher).

3) The positive attitude of our staff: Our students are great and always come in ready to go but when the days come when some of our classes have a challenging time the staff I work with is second to none in my opinion. Everyone is always ready to roll and happy in the place they are at and can be very motivating especially when you feel times are tough.

I hope you have enjoyed this post. I just wanted to share some things about how my school year is going. I would love to hear about how your year is going and not just the positives but the negatives as well. The more we share the more we can learn from one another which should always be our goal. Be sure to follow me on twitter @TuckerBrownPE and you can follow my free newsletter focused on Education with a pinch of Health and Fitness mixed in. Just follow the link http://bit.ly/2mLDkrW