J.P. Prezzavento - The Bits and Bytes of Education:

For a few months, my wife Kim and I have been discussing adopting a dog.  After a lot of careful thought and reflection we decided to adopt Molly a 3 year old puggle.  Between the time we decided to adopt Molly and when we brought her home, I did a lot of reading about how to welcome a new dog into our home.  While reading information from the web and talking to employees at the Open Door Animal Sanctuary I realized that bringing Molly home for the first time wouldn't be all that different from starting the school year with a new group of students. Here are five ways that adopting Molly has helped me prepare for the upcoming school year...and vice versa: 1.  Each day will not go as planned.  After we got home from the animal shelter, we decided to take Molly for a walk.  We tried to put her new harness on her, but no matter how hard we tried, Molly wouldn't put on her harness.  After about 20 minutes of trying to put on her harness and...

http://learnthat.com/2005/06/employee-goal-performance-planning/ The summer is quickly winding down, so that means that it is time to start thinking about the upcoming school year.  I have spent a lot of my summer vacation reflecting on this past school year.  Last year was a big year for me.  I took on a lot of new responsibilities with professional development and started to implement Web 2.0 tools into my lessons for the first time.  While I am proud of what I accomplished last year, I know that I still have plenty of room for growth.  With that being said, here are my goals for the 2011 - 2012 school year. 1.  Make a personal connection with every student in my classroom. I think that making connections is half the battle in education.  I can always tell which students or classes I have a strong rapport with because they care more about me and my class, and they try harder and learn more because of it.  If I am able to make a connection...