End of School Year Reflection for Accessible Education Teachers
One thing I really enjoy doing at the end of each year (preferably after all the students are gone) is to take an audit of my classroom and do some planning for next year. I know. I know. thinking about next year in June/July can be brutal. But I get excited thinking about a new year and the new possibilities of what could go better! The problem is if I wait to do this in August, I am never going to remember and I’d rather have this information fresh in my mind while I'm doing that kind of planning. So, I’ve gotten into the habit the last couple of years, of taking stock of my year and writing it down somewhere so that I can look at it in August and do better planning for the next school year!
There are a couple of different ways that I get feedback on how to plan for next year in my self-contained classroom. The first way is to give my staff an end-of-the-year staff survey, and this helps because we are looking as a group at what went well this year what did or didn't go well, what could I have done better as the classroom manager etc. I have a blog post that goes more in depth about how I build my end of your staff survey. It’s super easy, you don’t need more than a few minutes to put it together and it will definitely make an impact on your planning for next year. What’s nice about the staff survey and doing it in Google forms is that I can collect and analyze all of the data and reflect on it to understand the trends and to identify things that I need to work on next year. For example, if I have a lot of staff who say that they did not like the staff rotation schedule this year, I know that that’s a priority for thinking through it for next year. If I have a lot of staff who said that they wish they had more time to get feedback from me, that means that I need to be really intentional next year in building in blocks of time to sit with staff about how they’re doing. Even if your school year is done and you're not doing ESY, I would still encourage you to email this out to your staff- something that will help your classroom be a more enjoyable place to work is worth taking a few minutes out of summer vacation!
The next way I collect information is to ask my related service providers that work with me in my self contained classroom. In positions like ours we work with a lot of different professionals who all work together to support our students and all have a unique lens in which they view our work and our students. This could be done informally in an email, or even in-person! One great idea I saw a coworker do was to invite everyone who works with your kiddos together for lunch over the summer to talk about things that went well this year and things that could go better. It was a great way to get us excited for the next year and reflecting on our practice as a team. Even if you're just sending an email, I would really encourage you thinking about doing this. They will probably have a different or helpful perspective you might not have thought of. Maybe your OT has the perspective that kiddos could use extra practice on hand strengthening exercises and this prompts you to plan a co-treating session. Or maybe your PT has some suggestions for how to incorporate a movement group into your schedule. Maybe your SLP would like your staff to be a little bit better next year about using ACC devices and they could be a good resource for providing beginning of school PD or maybe you need to have your SLP come and do active consultation time in your classroom at the beginning of next year. If you’re like me, you're likely not going to have a co-teacher or other teachers in your building who do the same thing as you do, but you do have other professionals who work with you and give you that birdseye perspective that sometimes we lack when we’re in the trenches doing the day-to-day grinding of being a special ed teacher.
The last way that I like to reflect is to go through a checklist for myself or do a mini self reflection. This is a paper that I will look back to when August comes around and I start thinking about planning for the next school year. This planning document is a really quick guided reflection on how the school year went. It guides me thinking about what went well, what I wish I had the time to do this school year, what I’m looking forward to with next year’s caseload, etc. I find it helpful to have a guided checklist or reflection page and so I made one that you can access here by signing up with your email. This reflection page will be a great tool for you to go back to year in and year out to improve and reflect on your practice. You could type out the answers on your phone so that you have a note saved for the fall, or you could save this to your Google Drive, which is what I do in a folder for all of my next year plans so that it’s the first thing I see when I go to start making preparations for the start of the school year. Or, you could even print it out and put it in your planner and stick it into the month of August so that you have that natural reminder to look back on your reflections.
You might be thanking, Megan, I have totally moved on from this year- I'm on vacation, I'm by the pool, I don't want to keep thinking about last school year! My encouragement for you would be to carve out at least 10 minutes to do one of these things- even if all you do is go through a reflection sheet yourself with a cup of coffee one quick morning, you are going to be so glad that you took the time to remember to jot down these things when the fall comes around. Believe me, even the best intentioned teacher can look back on your previous school year with rose colored glasses once August rolls around. It is easy with time to forget some of the harder things or the harder dynamics about the previous school year after a summer of focusing on other things. Think of your end of year reflection as spending a little bit of time now to get the reward of the whole summer of relaxation and thinking about things other than school… Although you and I both know that you’re still gonna think about school at the random it’s times like when you’re showering or when you’re sitting by the pool. :)
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