Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Tag: end of year

  • Ouch…important feedback

    yelling teacher

    image found here –> Ms Teacher

    Well, I thought that none of my students were able to complete the end of year feedback assignment due to technical difficulties at school, but evidently one was able to…and I quote:

    …and what I didn’t like of this year was the teacher that I had becuase I she made us have meetings and she was yelling at my friends and I didn’t like that. and the outher thing that I didn’t like of thst year was peopple where picking on me more then last year…

    Ouch.

    That teacher was me. Her last memory of me was of me raising my voice at students in the class who felt that summer vacation had begun before it really had.

    Regardless of the reason, she remembers me as the teacher who was ‘yelling at my friends’.

    poo.

    Note for next year…remember that the end of the school year is trying for everyone. And that there are other ways to give students a reminder of what they need to do than by showing them my frustrations.

    And I don’t remember who said it, some have attributed it to Maya Angelou I think but…

    …they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care…

    and

    …People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel…

  • End of year – closure, time, plans.

    I forgot to have a good closure. Me, who knows of the importance of closure, forgot (me forgot? Whatever…).

    image from: Organizational Systems 2, acrStudio.com

    A group of kids didn’t come in on the last day and, of those who did, another group left after lunch. And a couple of them played a bit of a mean joke on me. But those who did stay were troupers – helping to move desks into the gym for the exam period, cleaning up the classroom, asking questions, displaying their concerns about next year.

    And I forgot to design closure into my year. I started to think about it, with this final blog post, but when our school’s Internet service decided not to cooperate, I ditched the thought.

    Rather than forgetting, I’m thinking I left out closure accidentally on purpose. I’m not entirely proud of this year. I definitely felt like I was treading water much of the year – reacting rather than planning and acting. With myself, my students, and the attendant who worked in my classroom with me. I don’t think I really wanted to hear what others felt about it.

    So, here is my closure. A plan for the future. I never want to feel like this again. That much I learned this year.

    Time is too precious to tread water for even a moment.

    Tracy, who is feeling the echo of the clock in the rhythm of her veins

    (‘who’ line borrowed from linkin park so I can howl with Jose, go check out his project by clicking on the link…)