One Simple Habit
By Mary Ellen Bafumo

Did you already vow that this year would be better than the last? Did the summer fly by so quickly that you never even had time to consider making changes? You're not alone and you're not too late to initiate one simple habit that will help you to become a more successful, efficient and organized teacher.

You keep all kinds of records on your students, right? Now you can try keeping a one-step record for yourself! While this new process focuses on you, it clearly impacts student achievement. The start of the school year is the best time to begin a new routine.

A Personal Teaching Record
Create a Personal Teaching Record (PTR) and think of it as a journal for teachers who don't have the time to write narratives. Here's how it works.

Create a page that you can duplicate for each week of the school year. List your teaching areas (math, reading, social studies, art, music, etc.) and place the date at the top. Space the teaching areas to allow room for notations. Leave some empty space at the bottom. You may decide to clarify something. Once that's done, you're halfway to being a better teacher.

Put this page in your lesson plan book or on your desk. Every time you use a strategy or material that works for students, write it in the appropriate grid before you forget it. At the end of the week, put the page in the back of your plan book. Replace it weekly with a new page.

Get into the habit
This simple habit allows teachers with little time to recall with accuracy what worked well. These things can be repeated, discussed with colleagues and improved. Over the course of the year, you'll create a running reference of successful strategies and materials on which to build in the new school year. You may decide that your comments at the bottom of the page make a good case for more extensive journaling.

Get into the PTR habit and see how it illuminates your teaching, then build on your best strategies and materials. Tell us how you set up your PTR and how it worked for you this year. We'll share your experiences in this column next May. Have a great year!

Mary Ellen Bafumo is a Program Director for the Council on Educational Change, an Annenberg legacy group.

August/September 2004, Vol.35, No.1