Musings

It’s been almost 11 months since I’ve moved to Hong Kong, starting a new position as a Year 4 (Grade 3) English Teacher at Chinese International School. Whenever I step into a new position or school, I allow myself a year to just observe, try to comprehend, and start thinking of what I can contribute for the upcoming year. This year was no different.

There are many great things about Chinese International School, and one of the great practices here is the “Appraisal.” I’ve never heard that word used before in a teaching context (I’m more used to Observations, assessment) so I was a bit intimidated by what that entailed. Basically, I had to set goals for myself, document what I’ve been doing to address my goal and produce evidence on how I’ve grown. (Yes, this post also counts as my evidence.)

So what were my goals this year? I had 2.

My first one is a school related goal: How can I better share my experiences in using Responsive Classroom with the school  community and further my understanding? CIS has been working with Positive Education and trying to embed it into the curriculum. As a part of this CIS has been working to incorporate Responsive Classroom practices into the primary school.  As I have been working with Responsive Classroom ideas for as long as I can remember (I also did my COETAIL final project on this), my goal became to share my experiences with others, and as a result, increase my understanding.

Goal number 2, my personal goal (required for all first year teachers): How can I further empower students so that they can take more ownership of their learning? I had some trouble with this one because I had to come up with a goal that I thought would be useful in my practice in a new school. Since this was my observation year, this was a push for me. So, I chose something that I feel like I could always work on. 

I will go further into each goal in separate blog posts.

Continue to Part 2