The following entry is a guest-post from Jeff Charbonneau, 2013 National Teacher of the Year, 2013 Washington State Teacher, NBCT, and Chemistry, Physics and Engineering Teacher from Zillah HS. 

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What will this year
hold?

For me and so many other teachers, the start of the school
year is a magical time filled with energy, new plans, ideas, and instructional
strategies.

A great many of us have spent the summer reading up on a
vast array of educational trends. 
Ranging from flipped classrooms to keeping cursive in the schools, we
have been knee deep in professional communities, conferences and followed
#edchat tweets until late into the nights.

With all these new tools hanging from our belts, I have to
ask, what will be different this year?

My hope is that this year will be the year that (among many,
many other things):

1.  We maintain an emphasis that education goals
are more important than the tools.

Don’t get me wrong, as a STEM
teacher who uses a smart phone, tablet, laptop, and a traditional pc daily (if
not all in the same hour), I strongly advocate for tech tools to help improve
instruction.  However, there are
times when paper and pencil are simply the best tools for the job. The past few
years there has been a trend to value tech integration for the sake of
technology integration.  However,
the tools are not the goal!

We, as a community of educators,
need to ensure that the tools we employ are used to improve learning.
Certainly technology can do that. 
However, I have seen far too many purchase technology and then try to
make it work; rather than determining the learning goals first, followed by
selecting the right tool (tech or non) for the job. 

I am an early adopter of technology
in both my personal and professional life, but sometimes there is nothing
better than paper and pencil.

Pick the goal before the tool!

2. We celebrate and communicate the success of
our students and staff.

 As a profession, we do an excellent job at
pointing out issues and problems within our system.  I do not deny these issues; they are
real and it is vital that we improve in several areas if we are going to meet
the needs of all of our students.

However, if we are to move forward, we must be willing to acknowledge the
successes that are all around us!

When one of my physics students incorrectly
answers a problem, I do not label them as failures, publicly ridicule, or place
blame. Instead I look for what that student did correctly, then help them to
understand the key places for improvement and work side by side in order to
help them succeed. 

As teachers, we know how to motivate our
students, let’s do the same with our profession.

Let’s make a conscious decision to showcase
the abilities and the progress that our students are making.

I fully admit that we have our problems, and
we need to continue to identify and communicate them with our parents and
community at large.  All I am
asking is that we put the same effort into identifying and sharing our success
too!

Now it’s your turn, as a teacher, what will you do to make
this year personally and professionally exceptional?