Our first week of teacher in-service finished up last week, and we have one more teacher day before school starts for the school year. I cannot believe how quickly summer ended.

Toward the end of July, I started working on my classroom since I wanted to change quite a few things. Here’s a TikTok video to show my progress at that time!

You can find an updated video at the end of this post!

Meet the Teacher

We held Meet the Teacher last week, and I had a slide show presentation playing on my board as I greeted students and parents. So many students stopped by my classroom!

Social Contracts are something new for our campus this year, an idea from Capturing Kids’ Hearts that our new principal has asked us to incorporate into our classrooms.

I had our classroom social contract available during Meet the Teacher. Students were eager to add their ideas to our classroom contract, and I look forward to seeing them expand upon it as the school year progresses.

2022 Changes

My classroom will still be gamified, and I’ve decided to follow the advice of only posting a few options for students at a time. I’m not sure how I want to move forward, but I’m looking forward to the start of this school year.

I have already updated our Game Zone, which is the spreadsheet where I keep all of our data. Students requested last year that all stats would be kept on the same page, so I changed that toward the end of last year. Surprisingly for me, my life became a whole lot easier when I combined all of the data sheets into one spreadsheet booklet!

Additionally, I want to move back to station rotations. Before COVID-19 changed the world, I was an advocate of stations in the secondary classroom. For the last few years, grouping students hasn’t been a possibility.

I’m not entirely sure if grouping students will work this year with the pandemic not being gone, but I hope to try as much as possible. In order to limit exposure, students will remain in their seats. Instead of students moving to a new station, the materials and station labels will rotate.

Since all students in the class will change stations at the same time, team coaches will move clips for their team on our Assignment Board to show at which station they are currently working.

Before class starts on the first station day, students will move their clip to where they are starting. When they learn the routine, they will open the instructions for their starting station and review instructions so they are ready to start when the timer begins.

I will also have a Creative Writing class this school year that I’m thrilled to teach again! I can’t wait to see what these students are able to accomplish!

When I started this post on Sunday evening, we had one more day to work before starting school. Now it’s Monday evening, and our first day of school is tomorrow. I’m ready and excited!

Thank You to Dina Buckley!

I wanted to add a special shout-out to my cousin Dina for her contribution to our classroom, too. Dina donated several prints of her work to me for my classroom in order to inspire students.

Check out her amazing artwork on her site here.

Thank you again, Dina! I know your work will inspire so many students this year.

Let’s get this school year started!

Before I bid you adieu, let me say one more thing. I know there are a lot of teachers leaving the profession or thinking about it this year. I know the hoops we have to jump through are not always easy. I know “the students need us” should be enough of a reason to stay if you ask non-teachers.

For those of you who are on your way out of education, I hope you find an amazing new adventure. For those of you choosing to stick around, I hope this school year is everything you hoped it would be. For those of you who are still unsure, I hope you have a positive year as you decide.

Let me know in the comments what changes you are making this year as we kick off a new journey!

If you would like a look at our finished classroom, complete with stations and décor, check out my latest TikTok video here!