Reflecting on your successes this year
December 1 is the 335th day of the year and the first day of Summer.
Human Rights Day is celebrated on December 10. The 2022 theme: Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All.
The ’30-day’ race toward 2023 begins in earnest. The school year is almost behind you.
End of year Professional learning; new English and Mathematics syllabus, class planning for 2023, budget ‘tidy ups’ and all those things that push teachers and school leaders into the bookend to end the school year.
It is easy to be caught up with the rush of tiredness in the push to close out the school year. It is important to find a moment to take a breath and reflect on the successes that your professionalism and commitment have drawn to you.
Every teacher and school leader will identify a success that is unique and special. Perhaps a shared success. For some it might be successful re-accreditation, others might feel that successfully completing the annual PDP cycle was a success to remember. The end-of-year school performance or the assemblies throughout the year can be the success that you think of.
Regardless of that one school success, the fact that you have engaged and improved the life of students and people around you is what defines your success as a human.
The student that worked harder to listen, share, and learn reflects the behaviour management strategies and high expectations you set in the classroom. The student that returned their first home reader or permission note, and the student that remembered to pick up their hat reflect the conditions for learning that you have created.
School leaders often read and acknowledge the success of others before, if ever, they do. While the professional benchmarks are met, budgets reconciled, funding ‘zeroed’ off and just before the laptop lid closes, school leaders should look inwards, to their own successes.
It is easy to create a list of successes that include the function and process of education. I would offer that teachers and school leaders do this as a default. This is an easier process, no less valid than any other.
Education is so much more than processes and metrics used to measure student outcomes and school improvement.
Your growth as a professional is a success for this year.
Reflecting on the successful self-care strategies, and those that didn’t is a success for this year!
You are the success for this year.
Congratulations, and thank you.