Drama Teachers: What’s Your Goal?

For some of you, school has already started. For others, that first day is looming right around the corner. Either way, it’s easy to get tossed into the whirlwind that is the beginning of the school year: deciding on plays, setting up procedures, and writing curriculum for multiple classes.

All of that work is important to have a successful and smooth running classroom. However, it’s just as important to check in with your needs and goals for the upcoming year. You know what you want for your students, but what do you want for yourself?

How often do you self-evaluate?

Teachers frequently ask students to evaluate themselves. Self-evaluation is an important part of the learning process; it cultivates critical thinking skills, promotes self-reflection, and (hopefully) fosters a sense of responsibility for one’s work.

Self-evaluation is not just for students. Teachers also need to develop critical thinking, practice self-reflection skills, and identify goals for their work.

Self-evaluation can help you:

• Give focus to your teaching
• Determine areas you love
• Recognize areas you don’t
• Highlight your strengths
• Pinpoint skills to improve
• Avoid burnout.
• Become a better teacher

Many teachers don’t have time to sit around and reflect throughout the year. So why not do it now, before the roller coaster really gets going? This will give you a document that you can refer to periodically to see if your goals have changed. You’ll be able to review it at the end of the year to see what you accomplished and what you can improve on.

Where do I start?

The beginning of the year is all about promise. What do you aspire to achieve? How do you feel when you look at the year ahead?

10 Self-Evaluation Questions for the beginning of the year:

1. What are my teaching goals for this year?
2. How have my teaching goals changed from last year?
3. What do I love about teaching?
4. How will I bring my love of teaching to the classroom?
5. What do I hate about teaching?
6. What action will I take to deal with these negative feelings?
7. What is my top strength as a teacher?
8. What is one area I feel needs improvement?
9. What action will I take to improve this area?
10. What am I looking forward to the most for this year?

Bonus! Finish these sentence starters.

• Teaching is important to me because…
• I am the kind of teacher who…
• I aspire to be the kind of teacher who…
• I expect all teachers to…
• The one word to describe my teaching goal this year is…