My how things have changed since my last reflection! Since then...I've become a "stay-at-home-mommy" to a beautiful little boy!! While it certainly isn't the easy, glamorous life that most people think of when they hear you stay at home (usually in your pj's) all day, I absolutely adore every minute with him and, quite honestly, have struggled to think about work. I miss my students dearly but my focus has solely been here with my family.
On that note...as I began my AR reflection/write-up I had to step out of my current state of mind and place myself back in the classroom to reflect on how my data collection went this time around. While I feel it was pretty successful, and I saw some wonderful growth in my students as writers, I feel that this round went a little less smoothly than the last AR cycle. I think this came about because of all the unexpected that happens in our day-to-day teaching. I had big plans to lead my students through at least 2 complete "units" of writing (mini-lessons and stories taken through the complete writing process) with the hopes that I'd have beautifully written pieces of writing to publish at the end. Not quite.
I didn't anticipate the amount of time it would take just to get my writer's workshop time up and running! Each day, for about the first 2 1/2 weeks, began with a need to review expectations and reflect on our previous day. I found that when I began to try and move to fast, things quickly fell apart. Any other time I would've felt completely comfortable taking that time to build up the expectations and practice them until we could do it in our sleep, but because I knew I was going on maternity leave at the beginning of December, I had a sense of urgency to get things moving for my sub. My hope is that I've left her with enough structure and that my lesson plans were detailed enough for her to continue this model when I'm gone. In a perfect world, I'll be able to pick right back up where we left off when I return in February...in a perfect world ;)
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