Now that back-to-school season is upon us, I'm reflecting on 2012-13 and making goals for the new year. Typically, we are asked to do this task in the fall sometime and then we meet with our principal to discuss our reflections. This year, administration is doing it a little differently, so, beginning next year, we will be required to reflect and plan at the end of the academic year. Since the new system wasn't developed until school let out for summer break, this year's goal-setting document is due during the first week of school. As I began writing my thoughts yesterday evening, I thought I should just turn this into a blog post that I can refer back to at the end of the year. Oh dear! Here I am sharing my successes AND failures with you. I am comfortable doing so because goodness knows I make and (usually) learn from mistakes. Read at your own risk as this might be rather boring for anyone besides me! :)
· Reflect on your qualities as a teacher. Comment on your strengths and areas that need strengthening in your classroom practice.
Keeping all learners (students and yours
truly) at or above the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL)
recommendation for 90% target language use in the classroom has been my goal
since I first stepped in the classroom several years ago. For the past two
years, I have been able to reach that goal, so that is the area of my teaching
where I feel the most success at the moment. On most days, we are speaking
French during class for more than 90% of the 50-minute class period and are
doing so by actively participating in a fun and easy system of accountability. Overall, students have made marked
improvement with regards to oral communication, so I plan to continue to engage
students in spoken practice with this method.
The most significant weaknesses I see when thinking about my goals for professional growth include the areas of feedback and assessment of interpretive communication. During the 2012-13 academic year, I was concerned about the way I handled both of these components of my courses, so it was rather easy to brainstorm ideas for this goal-setting exercise.
In
the past, the turnaround time for student feedback has not always been what one
would describe as stellar. In fact, sometimes I don’t return work for a week
or, shamefully, longer. Oh là là! I feel that I should return work to students
within two days after the due date. With quicker feedback, my hope is that
students will have at least a little more success since the information will
still be theoretically fresh in their minds.
During our first year with 1:1 iPads, I
also began using a proficiency-based grading system that has been wonderful for
assessment of student progress. However,
I didn’t have a rubric for the interpretive mode of communication (e.g.
listening to podcasts, reading various texts, and so on…). When students had to perform in this mode, I
usually felt that I had to prepare short answer questions for
them to answer so that I could grade the work out of the total number of
questions rather than assess their proficiency level. Sometimes, students would do
other tasks, like summarizing what they read, to demonstrate
understanding/proficiency, so I had to use rubrics that didn’t correspond with
the ones I had in place for the other types of assessment. I would like to have
rubrics reflect the proficiency goals better.
·
How will you work on those areas that
need strengthening? Include ways that [the school]
Depending on my schedule and the amount
of planning time I have each day, I will make an attempt to schedule time for
feedback on student work each day (rather than do it without any type of
organized plan.) If that’s not possible,
I will make a concerted effort to do it every other day. Since I don’t create multiple-choice and/or
fill-in-the-blank tests, it can be rather time consuming to assess the type of
work my students do. There’s not really anything that administration can do to
help me with this goal other than ensure I have two planning periods since students
must write compositions, create products, and so on.
As for my goals for better assessment
methods of the interpretive mode of communication, I am either going to create
rubrics before school resumes or use one that another world language educator
and/or school district prepared and shared.
I will also do more pre-, during, and post listening/reading tasks that
require students to show comprehension by engaging in critical thinking.
· What were your professional goals this year? Comment on your ability to meet these goals.
Listed below are the 2012-13 goals I
submitted last fall with comments on successes and failures in parentheses. (Last year, we were asked to list three general goals and three that include some sort of collaborative work.)
1. French
1,2,3 Curriculum: I plan to revise
the current curriculum as the year goes on to make it align more with the six
major themes of the AP course. The themes are very broad and practical, so it
makes sense to get students accustomed to them from on day one of the program. (I
would say I met this goal because I did do some revisions as we moved from unit
to unit in all four levels of French. This is a continual work in progress, so
I will be revising it again this year, just as I do every year.)
2. Model
UN : I plan to prepare students for
the spring conference this year. I also plan to build a wiki that will be rich
with resources that will aide delegates in their research. ( I would say that I
met this goal, too, since I did the following: created a club website, met
students for a few meetings, participated in a club meeting with a former
ambassador to Tanzania, and tried to find a conference (to no avail) that
didn’t conflict with our holidays.)
3. French Club: I plan to see if there is some sort of
service learning members can do OR help gather donations for supplies to be
sent with a doctor/missionary going to Haiti. I have an idea for the latter, so
I just need to make initial contact. (I did not meet his goal, unfortunately.
French Club only met a handful of times due to lack of leadership on my part
and on the part of the officers. Moving forward, I hope to merge with the
Spanish and Latin clubs in order to form a bigger and, hopefully, more united
international club.)
GOALS FOR COLLABORATION:
1. I plan to
work with the upper school librarian in order to do a lesson on effective
Google searches for quality authentic sources in French. Students need to be able to conduct research
by finding articles, infographics, and podcasts/videos in the target
language. The librarian will also teach
them how to set up their Noodle Tools account and write an annotated
bibliography. All learners, with the
exception of French 1 students, who will do it in the spring, will have this
training in the fall. Moving forward, I will not have to have two-day lessons
on this at every level of French since it will be done in French 1 every year.
(This goal was mostly met because I did collaborate with the librarian to carry
out this learning experience, but I didn’t remember to do it in the spring with
the French 1 students. This means that I will have to do the lesson with French
1 and 2 students this year in order for all students to have the initial
training. I will review the research process with the level 3 and AP students
this year. I will also change the expectations for the research project for the
level 2 students because I asked them to produce at a level of proficiency that
was too advanced and resulted in frustration and poor performance.
2. I plan
to do a year-long collaborative project with a French teacher in Paris, France.
We are doing a focused project that involves research among students at
participating schools, both in-house and across the globe. We are building a wiki and modeling it after
the FlatClassrooms project. This is a huge endeavor, but it should be rewarding
for the students. The topic of this
project is global citizenship and digital media. Only levels three and AP will
participate, it looks like, but I hope to have the lower levels at least
connect with other schools through blogging.
(This goal was not met. We started the project, but it fizzled out due
to conflicting schedules and a loss of contact. The blogging project with
another American independent school did not happen because I dropped the ball.
Our schedules do not mesh well either so we should have had organized it better
on the front end. Moving forward, my students will be connecting with
university students in Paris and they will come visit us one day in February as
they have done for the past two years. There is another possibility for an
exchange with a French high school, but I’m not yet sure if we have the same
ideas for a project.)
Moving forward, I plan to create a reflections and goal-setting document that students can add to the e-portfolio they will keep this year. Last year, I think I just asked students to think about their goals because I can't find a document anywhere! If I find one, however, I'll add a link in the comments below. If you read this post, thank you for humoring me!
What are your goals for the upcoming year?
Now, that we're getting closer and closer to the first week of school, I'm going to go ahead and wish you a fantastic year full of creativity, inspiration, and, finally, something we need to experience every day -- laughter!
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