'Wait till next year*' photo (c) 2010, Jason - license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Our school year ended an hour ago, and I can’t think of a better time to think about what I’m going to do differently next year!

A few years ago, I wrote an Education Week column (What Are Your New School-Year Resolutions?) offering similar year-end reflections for the next year and invited readers to contribute their own, and would like to do the same here. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll consider turning your comments into another Ed Week piece.

Here are my initial thoughts:

1. I want to develop a much better management system for student paperwork — to both help them and me to be better organized. I think I need to revisit my two-part Ed Week series on classroom organization, which shared lots of great ideas from different contributors.

2. I’ve got to put a lot of thought into how I’m going to teach my classes that, in effect, are two different ones simultaneously, primarily with English Language Learners (including ones with both Beginning and Intermediate ELLs). I was able to manage that very well with excellent student teachers this year, but I may, or may not, have that kind of assistance next year.

3. I need to further strengthen by ability to be patient. I have a lot of it, but there are times when I know I should demonstrate more of it, but still let myself give-in to acting in ways that result in less-than-effecting teaching.

Okay, so those are “confessions.”

It’s your turn — what are you going to do differently next year?