I love swapping weekly routines with teachers. It shows what we value and what we prioritize for each day of teaching. I talked about my planning process in my back-to-school bullet journal post in August, but this plan can be a candidate for change based on the group of students each year. I always like to review my weekly routine each year when I do my reading each summer. Reflecting on these practices is one of the ways that I like to feed my own creativity and keep my teaching practices fresh for students. I know teachers always like to have established routines “that work,” but I would argue that the new things we try to keep our student-minds working like new. I got into teaching because learning was something that appealed to me; the nature of the weekly routine is something that begs to be refined over and over.

Let’s #swaproutines. I would love to know how your classroom runs and is organized with different activities and lessons.

After confessing the reason I would leave teaching, I wanted to tackle the whole paper problem head on. I often will get an idea in my head and have that "brain-on-fire" type of feeling when it comes to teaching. It is one of the reasons why I teach. However, taking on too huge of a problem without a step-by-step plan is going to lead to burnout.  I feel like the whole "paper problem" is too much to chew on before I am back practicing in real life in the classroom. I want to think about implementing some key changes that I took away from my readings over summer break to change not only my methods, but perhaps the way I do business. From my post where I identified the main problems that exist in my systems and mindset, I have concluded to focus on these three main areas for going back to school:

1.) Using mentors for the teaching of writing. 

2.) Restructuring the writing workshop. Students will write more in class, participate in stations, collaborate with each other and me, etc.

3.) Streamline processes that I have in place so that I am taking less paper home that does not need to go home. (I.E. paper that does not require extra feedback)