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Professional Development Opinion

School Dreams in July?

By Starr Sackstein — July 21, 2015 2 min read
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They don’t usually start until late August.

The panic of being late for the first day of school and the assorted other nightmares that have accumulated over the years as the new school year is upon us.

This year they’ve started three weeks after school ended. This is atypical, but I’m not surprised.

These are different though. I’ve yet to wake up in a sweat, nervous that the alarm isn’t set. These dreams have more to do with my changing role at school and the excited fear I have about not being successful.

My mind is full of new ideas after all of the amazing networking and learning and I’m eager to start planning. The deep desire to be ready and to really help shift the mindset in my school is hovering in my sub-conscious.

Here are some of the many things I need to plan for:


  • Readjusting my curriculum in my AP class and possibly switching some of the literature to keep things fresh. I’m considering polling former students about suggestions for which books to take out and which new ones to circulate in. Something needs to be shaken up this year.
  • Meeting with my newspaper students soon to start planning for the new year. Material needs to be written so the site doesn’t go stale. I’ve already reached out to alumni to start participating in a column on the blog to share where they are now.
  • Setting up a meeting to talk to my principal to understand what her goals are for my new position as a coach before I determine too much of what I think I’m supposed to do. I need to align my goals with her expectations so that we can ensure their congruence.
  • Researching how I can best serve my colleagues in this new capacity so that I can be really prepared come the fall to step into this new role.
  • Completing the new assessment policy, making sure necessary tutorials are available to help ease teachers into the new expectations.
  • Reviewing the CTE application and figuring out how to complete the school application with my colleagues before the fall to get that program into action.
  • Summer work needs to be completed before the end of August as well (I still have two books to finish and a couple of literary magazines to judge). This daunting task requires my focus and recently that has gone on summer vacation as well.

So how do we combat the summer dreams about the impending school year? We plan. We embrace the challenges and we ready ourselves for the awesome adventure that awaits.

How you planning for next year? Please share

The opinions expressed in Work in Progress are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.