It's the end of June and I'm reflecting (well it's July by the time I posted this). It seems like this is a good time for reflection on the year, or maybe the only free time for reflection on the year. This last semester I think was the busiest in my now complete first four years of teaching. All three of my courses were new, I was in my second semester in a new school, new department, the list goes on.
About three-quarters of the way through this semester I met with my previous department head about some interesting innovations I had made to the grade 9 course and the new style of final assessment I piloted the semester before. It was a great conversation not only about the innovations but about the pedagogy in general. This left me energized and feeling good about some advances that I had made last semester. That feeling soon turned to guilt as I had done nothing but the status quo yet this semester.
I took me quite a bit of reflection and thinking to rid myself of the status quo guilt. I came to the realization that sometimes the status quo is actually new for you and that's okay. After teaching three brand new courses and two of them being senior physics, I decided to give myself a break. This is also a message that I am going to incorporate into my new teacher mentoring program. A new course can be your innovation this semester.
Looking forward, I have ideas for innovation for these courses for next year which I think is important. Innovation and adaptation of teaching needs to happen, but sometimes that has to happen the second time around.
