Its the Professional Thing to Do

Every professional should critique him or herself on a regular basis. A nice honest critique and then make changes accordingly. While doing so you wonder:

• Did I give it my best?
• What were my strengths? Weaknesses?
• What does the research say?
• What did the children leave with?
• How did they respond to me and the classroom?
• Also how did they begin to respond to each other?
• Am I only looking at research that supports what I believe?
• What changes should I make?
• Are my expectations realistic?
• Am I delusional? lol
• Have I bitten off more than I can chew?
• ...and a lot of others I cant think of right now

Im currently looking at a program that is a bit different from what I did the second year. Reading it makes me understand more why I chose to teach the way I did ( a mixture of whole language and cooperative learning).At the same time, I don't want to do the easy thing and shun something because its "not what I like" or not what Im used to. I just started looking and the jury is still out. 

Initial thoughts?

Im sure each has its place. In a perfect world, Id have time for all I wanted to do and all the children needed but in a half day, that just isnt going to happen. I felt like my focus last year of reading for understand, even if it was mostly from pictures and reading from memory, not only helped in English but would help when reading Arabic because they were thinking rather than focusing on sounding out words. Being alone in the room doesnt allow me to do both...and this probably wouldnt be an issue if I had someone else doing a small group. 

I guess I kind of felt like I was working on building a foundation that could handle a building like the Burj; focus on vocabulary, comprehension, phonemic awareness,oral language skills, and sharing what theyve read  through whatever means they could express it all while supporting their growing love for books. If they went into the next grade with letter/sound knowledge and the ability (or exposure) to making simple words from word families, and to recognize what letters (sounds) go into making certain words, then I felt like the next teacher could most certainly build the first floor and have them reading words and their comprehension would be on par or not far behind.

I have lots more reading to do and will see how my mind wraps itself around all this information.

Until then.