Wednesday, December 31, 2014

2015 New Year's Resolutions



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2015 New Year’s Resolutions- A Linky Party!

Can it already be the last day of 2014?  This year has really flown by!  It’s definitely been a great year, but as I reflect on all that 2014 has brought I’ve been thinking a lot about 2015 and what I hope to accomplish.  So, today I’m joining my first linky party!  I’m linking up with Aileen Miracle at Mrs. Miracle's Music Room to blog about my 2015 New Year’s Resolutions.



Personal:  One word I could use to sum up 2015:  Busy!  Between driving back and forth from Northern Virginia to Williamsburg where my husband was attending grad school, planning a wedding, moving, working a full-time job and a part-time job, starting at a new school, getting more involved with VOKE, finishing Level III at AKI, and completing my master’s thesis there was rarely a time where I didn’t have multiple things on my mind at once!  This year, I want to take the time to get back in touch with my friends and take more adventures.

Professional:  I have a confession to make….I used to hate teaching recorder.  Being a flute player, I thought teaching recorder would have been easy when I first began teaching, but it turned out to be the opposite.  It became even more difficult to effectively teach recorder when I began my Kodaly levels because it was difficult to incorporate along with the concepts I wanted to teach and I couldn’t really find any information about recorder in the Kodaly Classroom that I felt would work for me and my students.  However, when I started aligning my recorder curriculum with my melodic and rhythmic curriculum I found that not only did my students progress quicker, but I actually really enjoyed teaching recorder!  I’ve been flirting with the idea of putting my recorder curriculum down on paper and writing out the arrangements I’ve been using for a while, so this year I hope to get all of that information in written format for at least the first couple units that I teach in 3rd and 4th grade.

Classroom:  I have a ton of manipulatives, worksheets, and other teaching aids in my classroom, but they are so disorganized!  It is not unusual for me to create or buy something new, only to find that I already had something similar already ready to go just not easily found. I really need to find a good system for keeping everything organized!

Blog/ TpT:  I began my blog and Teachers Pay Teachers store this fall in the middle of a lot of other things happening and as a result haven’t been able to give my full attention to either one.  Now that things have calmed down, my goal for 2015 is to tend to both on a weekly basis (blog once a week and work on a new product at least once a week), especially when it comes to marketing and getting the word out.  This break from school has allowed me to update all my products in my TpT store and start several new blog posts so stay tuned!

Just for me:  I love making music with my students, but I really miss making music just for me.  A couple years ago I played in a community wind ensemble and did gigs from time to time, but I have since stopped all that.  I’ve been looking into different performing groups in the area in the hopes of starting back up, hopefully I will find something to join that fits in with my schedule!

That’s it for me!  Happy New Year everyone!

Ashley

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