How much better?

Day 3: Discuss one “observation” area that you would like to improve on for your teacher evaluation.

I identified that I wanted to become better at crafting purposeful learning experiences for my students. And I just wanted to be better.

This past year, moving from the ninety minute block to the barely fifty-six minute block established the perfect environment for purpose to take the lead. Losing thirty-four minutes every day does not leave room for fillers, busy work and aimless activities.

Whittling each class down to less than an hour required intentional planning of everything we did, and a firm grasp on classroom routines and expectations.

I don't know if I became better at crafting learning experiences for my students, but I do know that I have become more aware of the time that I'm using in class everyday.

Doing time audits during class have become a favorite reflective tool of mine. In the past I have used a number of timer apps and even a live timer from a production program to measure how long I'm actually spending on each part of the class. This gives me great data and feedback about where my lesson dragged, and where students needed more or less time.

Yesterday, I found a new app called Hours. It's an amazing free (for a limited time) app that does wonders for managing each minute of your day. You can set up multiple timers to measure how long it tasks for each tasks. This is gold and I'm glad I grabbed it while it was on sale for FREE. If I ever have a student teacher again, I will be using this app of them every single day.