Ending the Year Strong - 10 Tips for the Combined Grade Teacher
Written by Abena Sey
June 5, 2024
As the school year comes to an end, the month of June elicits many emotions for teachers. You may feel overwhelmed by the end of year responsibilities, such as final assessments, report card preparation and the various year-end events. You may also feel worried about not having enough time to complete the curriculum given the various circumstances that may have impacted your plans during the year.
When reflecting upon your school year, you may feel pride at what you were able to accomplish with your students, or concern about whether or not you did enough to prepare them for the next grade. It may have been a trying year within your classroom or within the school community, and you are looking forward to the end with hopeful anticipation for the next school year. For some teachers it may have been a successful year overall and for others it may have been an extremely difficult one. You may be ready for a transition.
The end of year means a lot of change for a teacher which can oftentimes be difficult to navigate without the right support. Teachers may feel anxiety from uncertainty awaiting news about their upcoming teaching assignment. This can be a stressful period on many levels, but please know that you are not alone. My hope is that you have someone you trust to discuss these concerns with in order to release some of the anxiety and make a plan going forward for your personal well-being.
You can be proactive about how you approach this time of year. Here are some things you can do to manage the increased pressure this month:
Write your thoughts down to rid yourself of worry and plan for your future. The act of writing your thoughts has a cathartic effect and can give you clarity about what your next best move should be. You may see how you can channel your feelings into something purposeful like creating a blog or social media post. You may also refer to the thoughts and feelings of other teachers’ blogs or social media posts whose stories can support you as you navigate through this period.
Get into community with other educators so that you can be uplifted by people who understand what you are going through. There is power in being in community with teachers, so ensure that you find support from your professional learning network.
Take some time to reflect on your school year. Think about what teaching strategies worked best for your students and how they could be implemented for your next group of students. Celebrate your successes and learn from your failures so that you can grow and aspire for progress in your teaching. Look at ways in which you have grown as a professional and celebrate how you have changed for the better. This can be ways you have set appropriate boundaries to help you feel more balanced in your personal and professional life or have been more organized in your classroom. These small victories can reap many rewards to keep you motivated and inspired in teaching.
Choose to be flexible. Be open to the possibilities outside of your current teaching assignment and consider how a move can help you grow and reignite your passion for teaching.
Try something new with your current students. Use this opportunity to try new strategies, educational apps, resources, or seating arrangements with your students and use the feedback to plan for next year.
Show your students how they have grown this year. You can use all kinds of data to measure students’ growth so they can see the results of their efforts. You can look at their academic growth, social and emotional development, progress towards their personal goals and positive contributions to the classroom community. This is your opportunity to show students that they are a whole person and can grow in many ways each school year. You can help your students celebrate and make plans for how they would like to continue progressing in the next grade. This data is beneficial for you, too. You can also take pride in how you have helped shape your students.
Refresh your classroom. Take the time to gradually declutter and organize your space. If you are not changing classrooms, you can start changing your bulletin boards, anchor charts or other decorations to suit your needs. You may want to incorporate new strategies, such as a word wall or sound wall. As mentioned before, you can try how you would incorporate these educational devices into your teaching with your current students and modify them based on their feedback.
Refresh your classroom library. You can choose to organize and declutter your classroom library by donating books to your students or your colleagues. You can also repair and replace well-loved books with new copies.
Prepare evidence of students’ learning. Some jurisdictions may require a literacy / numeracy portfolio to document students’ progress. This folder may include final reading assessment data or a writing sample to track literacy progress or final math assessment data. A teacher may choose to create a portfolio to send home as a year-end memory book. It’s exciting for students to look at and reminisce about their work from September to June.
Once you know your next teaching assignment, you can begin planning. As I recommended in my previous blog, start with the curriculums for the success of your combined grade assignment. You’ll be grateful that you put in the effort to plan and organize prior to September.
