So, how do we decide what’s most important, and what can be put to pasture? NASA* has a process of prioritization that they utilize to determine which space missions to focus their energy on that honors their time and resources in a meaningful way:

• Identify Scientific Goals

  • This might be a standard you want to go deeper into, a social skill you wish to master with your students, etc.

• Prioritize Scientific Goals

  • Out of all of the things written down, what might be most important to accomplish within a given timeframe?

• Define Programs and Missions

  • These are your action steps. What might be the best next steps to accomplishing your goal?

• Prioritize Missions

  • What action steps are critical to achieving your goal? Most realistic? You might consider focusing on action steps that are easily attainable first and then moving towards ones that will take more time.

• Carry Out Missions

  • Bring life to your goals! You got this!

The fourth quarter presents many opportunities for us to become easily distracted and lose sight of what’s most important. I encourage you to apply the process of prioritization to your own classroom to determine where you will lend your focus over the next couple of months. If our goal is for students to be engaged citizens within our community, how might you teach students the process of prioritization? How might you apply this to your life outside of the classroom?

*Click here to read more about NASA’s prioritization life cycle.

While it doesn’t always feel natural to wait, simple strategies to increase wait time include these:

• Name “think time” in your classroom and provide 15-30 seconds of silence for all to think prior to any written or verbal response.

• Count to 15 in your head prior to taking a response.

• Practice being comfortable with silence.

• Omit student names when asking a question. This leaves the opportunity for all students to think about the question posed.

• After a student response is shared, wait to respond.

• Know the complexity of a question posed. Lower-level questions require less wait time, whereas higher-level questions require more.

Honing the skill of wait time has a great impact on performance, increasing response length, variance in who responds, confidence, and achievement.

So how might you hold yourself accountable to the practice of wait time?

Two years ago, I heard of the book One Word That Will Change Your Life, co-written by Dan Britton, Jimmy Page, and Jon Gordon. The authors state that the goal is to choose one word and fix your attention on that word over the course of the calendar year. Now, to me, this seemed manageable. Until I sat down to think of my word. As an educator, we are faced with many goals, lists, and checklists of what we want to complete for our students, for our peers, and within our building, but to self-reflect on what I wanted to achieve was far more difficult than I expected. The text guides you through three steps:

1. Look within yourself.

2. Look out to others and what is going on around you.

3. Look up to role models.

My word for 2020 is present. Not the type of present that you open, but the physical and emotional action of being present. In order for me to be the best wife, mom, educator, friend, and person that I can be, I need to be present. I want to find joy in the now and in the moments that are fleeting.

Now it’s your turn. What are you hoping to communicate in 2020? What is your one word? Feel free to share it with us on Twitter using the hashtag #OneWord2020 and tagging @officialSPS.

As educators, it is important to pause and take time to reflect on how the day went or how a lesson went and why. Check out this article on the power of teacher reflection:

10 Reflective Questions for Teachers to Use Everyday

It is also the ideal time to have students reflect on their own growth so far this year. Having students reflect on a daily basis allows them to take ownership of their learning and strive to achieve goals they have set. Allowing students time to think about what they have learned and how they have applied their learning can have a huge impact on student success. Below are some tips for reflecting with students:

• Have students set goals at the beginning of a unit or chapter and reflect on their progress throughout and at the conclusion.

• Have students track their own progress toward meeting goals.

• Allow students to verbally process their reflection with you or another student.

• Celebrate growth and successes with your students!

Click below for both digital and face-to-face reflection strategies to try out in your classroom:

15 Reflection Strategies To Help Students Retain What You Just Taught Them

3 Ways to Promote Student Reflection

If you’re like most teachers in early November, your hand is high in the air. This chart, created by Ellen Moir of New Teacher Center, displays new teachers’ feelings about their career choice throughout a school year. While her research focuses on beginning teachers, even experienced teachers feel these phases to one degree or another.

You might be wondering why we’re throwing out this downer of a chart. Here’s why: recognizing patterns and trends can give you the umph to make it through the hard parts. Winter is coming. But so is SPRING!

In the meantime, how can we all get through this past-the-honeymoon, lack-of-sunlight, daily-grind part of the school year? Here are a few ideas:

• Find your people. Surround yourself with colleagues who multiply your joy and divide your sorrows. Seek out their encouragement and camaraderie as if your mental health depends upon it.

• Be one of those people for your colleagues. Provide an empathetic ear, and listen with attention to the possibilities behind the stress. Cheer your co-workers on toward their best selves. (In other words, be a marigold.)

• Look at the forest, not the trees. What’s the big picture? Why did you choose to be a teacher? Let that big picture purpose drive the daily, minute-to-minute challenges and dilemmas you’ll inevitably face.

• Schedule bright spots. Whether that’s a celebration of learning with your students, an extra-special lesson, or some time for recharging over a weekend, give yourself something to look forward to.

For a deeper dive into the phases outlined in the chart, check out this article from New Teacher Center.