New School Year...New Goals

The new school year is coming up and I can't suppress the excitement. There's just something about the first day of school that gets me all giddy inside. Nerd-alert! Am I the only lame-o that feels that way?

Last year, I missed out on that feeling because I was on maternity leave at the beginning of the school year. When I finally did go back to work I just wasn't feeling the love for the job. I wanted to be home with my little baby. It also didn't help that progress reports were due the week I got back and I had to write notes on kids I hadn't seen yet. Summer break has given me a much needed rejuvenation and now that I've had some space from the job I've realized how much I miss it. I'll only be working 2 days/week this year and I think it'll be the perfect balance! I get to stay home with my buddy the majority of the week AND spend some time with my speechies each week. It sure is nice to have such a fulfilling career.

Each new year brings a freshness about it that I love. It's a chance to start over on things that weren't quite right and improve on things you've done in the past. Each year I come up with a few goals of what I'd like to achieve in the year to come. Here are a few that I'd like to address this year...

1. Make a better language profile that helps me really keep tack of my language kids abilities throughout the year. 
2. Try to form the most functional and beneficial goals for each student. Think BIG PICTURE. Is this helping them and can they apply it outside of my speech room?
3. Make very brief lesson plans for each session. By brief, I mean brief! But I want to make sure every session has a clear cut objective that I stick to and that I've thought through how it will be helpful for each student. Kristen inspired me. I love her blog! 
4. Find or make good homework descriptions for parents. Describe different ways parents can help their child with each specific sound.
5. Post objectives for each session for students to see. This would be really good for my language kids to understand why they are coming to me.

I'll be writing posts for each of these individual goals. Do you have any goals that you really want to master this year? Share with us! I will probably want to add them as goals for me too ;) There is SO MUCH room for improvement here.