TL;DR:

• Reflect on your professional goals and evaluate your impact on students and staff.
• Express gratitude to those who have positively influenced you.
• Identify areas for improvement, celebrate your wins, and continue learning and reflecting on your purpose in education.

As you read this, you may have recently finished your school year or will soon finish. In retrospect, you may want to focus on what worked well for you and what didn’t work so great this year. Perhaps journal about it or reflect with a friend or colleague.

Goal Achievement: Have you met your professional goals for the year?

Go back to the goals you set for your evaluation criteria or any goals you may not have officially set with your supervisor. How well did you meet your students’ or staff’s needs? Looking at the data, has the needle moved forward at all?

There will always be things that could have been improved upon, but you did the best you could. Reflect on the relationships you made with students and colleagues.

You can take both the positive and negative moments as learning experiences that help you continue to grow professionally. Click To Tweet

Thank those who have positively influenced you.

Whether you have a position at the district level or in a school, you’ve likely learned a lot from those who you’ve closely worked with. The gratitude could also be extended to students and parents or community members.

Reflect on what you’d like to change.

What are things you’d like to change for next year? When things don’t always go as planned, we make a mental note of what we’d like to see done differently next time. If you’re moving to a new school setting, what are some areas in which you’ll grow in your next position?

Think of 5-10 wins of the year.

This can include breakthroughs with challenging students, or perhaps you helped a student increase attendance. Maybe you coached a sport or led a club or other extracurricular and the students really enjoyed it.

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Continue Learning & Reflecting

Remember, learning is never done. Whether the end of the year has left you with much to improve upon or it went relatively well, you can take both the positive and negative moments as learning experiences that help you continue to grow professionally.

Reevaluate your “why.” Like I write in my book Out of the Trenches: Stories of Resilient Educators, this time of year provides an opportunity to rethink your purpose for being in education. You may be thinking of leaving your school, grade level, or type of position. These things can give you a reason to invigorate your why in education!

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About Dana Goodier

Dr. Dana Goodier has 23 years of experience in education. She has taught World Languages and English and worked as a middle school administrator. She completed her doctorate degree (Ed.D.) in Educational Leadership early 2020. For her dissertation, she researched reasons parents were opting their students out of high-stakes testing at middle schools and how that affected the district accreditation rating.

She often speaks at conferences, providing educators with techniques to minimize off-task behavior and to increase time on task. Goodier is the host of the “Out of the Trenches” podcast, which features educators who share their stories of resiliency. She is also the author of the book, “Out of the Trenches: Stories of Resilient Educators.”

Follow her on Twitter @danagoodier and visit her website at: www.danagoodier.com