Wandering about twitter the other day I cam across this fantastic idea from @teachthought and I thought it would be just the thing to kick start some reflective thinking this term.

Then I went back to work and my feet haven’t hit the floor since, luckily I had clean clothes lined up and I just about squeezed in time for the odd shower, I may have eaten, but I’ll be damned if I remember what. 

Why does “back to work” hit so hard? How did we manage before? I suppose we’ll get used to it, by the time my tan has faded I’ll have got into automatic gear.

In the meantime it seems all the more important to take up this challenge, otherwise a whole month will have wizzed by before I have time to think about it again, so here goes;

DAY 1 – Goals for the school year

Oh my, I’m sol glad you asked me that one, I have so many exciting things lined up.

Firstly I’ve joined the editorial board of the amazing ETAS, the English Teachers’ Association of Switzerland ( Iive about 15km from the border in case you were wondering why!). I will be helping proofread and finding articles for their journal. I’m especially looking forward to helping with the special supplement on teens.

Workshops – so far I’m giving one in September at the ETAS PD day, on dyslexia in the classroom, and another one on the use of L1 at the TESOL France conference in November.

CPD – while the above can be counted as professional development I’ll also be continuing my M.A. TESOL that I started last year with Sheffield Hallam, depute the deadline stress I really enjoyed this course and am looking forward to continuing it, and doing more classroom research to fulfil its requirements.

After the amazing time I had last year at IATEFL Harrogate, I’ve already booked my place for IATEFL 2015 – Manchester, can’t wait, and to keep me going there’s the IATEFL web conference and plenty of webinars to watch out for.

In between all this stuff I hope I’ll find time for my classes! Actually I’ve got some fun things lined up already, especially for the Avanced English Programme I’ve set up for some of my students.

Finally, this morning I came across theTED ed club, which gives you resources to start and run a TED ed club in your school, I’ll keep an eye on it but I’m not sure I’ll have a suitable class to use it with this year.

Anyway, that’s more than enough to motivate me this year, I’ll just have to find a marathon or two to run and I’ll be sorted!

What about you, why not share you plans and goals for this new school year?