A week of reflection

Since Cobb County had this week off, this week was a week of reflection and self-evaluation. I looked back on the year so far and there are a couple of things I need to fix. The most important thing for me is to stay more organized. Something that always gets me behind is putting of grading papers for a week or two. Even though sometimes we all say, "I'll get to it tomorrow, or next week etc..." that always gets me in trouble and I'm doing better at it, I just have to make it a habit and be disciplined. Something else that I have to work on is breaking down my lessons even more, piece by piece. Something that I believeis that some of us take for granted is the fact that all of the kids know the very basics of what we are trying to teach them. Something which I found out early in my teaching career is that you always want to break down every piece of the lesson which you are trying to teach because you truly don't know which students know the very basics and what students know and don't know. Even though as teachers, we sometimes feel the need not to break down the simplest of details, the students will appreciate it. The last thing which I need to be more mindful of is that even though I am teaching my lessons in different ways I always need to walk around the class more often to check on students' understanding before the end of class. Even though students say that they understand something, nine times out of 10, they really don't but they don't want to be embarrased by asking a question. I've found out that if you check with a student individually they will open up to you if they don't understand something. I just have to be sure I check more frequently!