I’ve set a few goals for the year; some personal, some professional. While several of them are too private (or boring) to share here, I’ll share the rest in the hope that someone else will be encouraged, possibly because they’ve set similar goals, or because they haven’t (but might now be inspired to).

Personal

Here are three personal goals I set for 2015:

1. Run a total of 365 miles. My physical health hinges on running. If I run consistently, I have more energy, eat more nutritious food, and get sick less often. I failed miserably at last year’s goal of 500 miles for the year. For 2015, I’m aiming for an average of a mile per day.
2. Read 25 books. Whether fiction or nonfiction, I feel like I’m a better person when reading books regularly. Possibly because I am becoming a better person. My goal is two per month, with another thrown in for good measure.
3. Write 52 journal entries. In the same way that blogging reflectively has helped me grow as an educator, writing reflectively on a regular basis helps me grow as a husband, father, and friend. The only problem? I rarely keep up with this habit. My proposed solution for this year? To carve out 30 to 45 minutes at the same time each week to write.

Professional

Here are three reasonandwonder-related goals I set for 2015:

1. Write 52 blog posts. In general, I want to write more consistently. But “write more consistently” is a terrible goal for the year. So I attached some numbers to it: A post a week (on average) for the entire year. 52 posts sounds like a lot of writing, but once per week sounds within reach. Here goes!
2. Write 36 lessons (12 of each type). I had a blast adding the lessons page to my blog at the end of last year. I want to keep the content flowing, and also to challenge myself to write a variety of lessons. My goal is to write one lesson in each style (problem based lessons, open middle problems, and Desmos lessons) per month. If I’ve added 36 new lessons to the blog by the end of the year, I’ll be a happy camper.
3. Present 20 workshops/presentations. I have a desire to grow my consulting business over the next few years. At this point, I already have 10 events on my speaking calendar for 2015. Not a bad start! I look forward to adding a few more workshops and professional development sessions to build toward 20 for the entire year.

Resources

A quick word about the resources I’ll use to create and track my goals this year:

• Evernote. There are about 1000 reasons why I love this app. Make that 1001, as this year’s goal-setting got an inspiration boost from this Evernote blog post.
• OmniFocus. It’s a bit pricey, but I already use it for all of my to-do list and project tracking, so it made sense to roll my 2015 goals into this tool as well.
• Google Sheets. When it comes to tracking miles run, books read, and the like, I’m a sucker for a simple spreadsheet.
• Day One Journal. While I love Evernote for note taking in general, when it comes to journaling in a non-distracting app, I absolutely love Day One.
• WordPress. I guess it goes without saying that none of my blog-posting or lesson-writing goals would be possible without this. By the way, if you’re reading this and you haven’t started a blog of your own yet… What are you waiting for?

Your Turn

Willing to share your personal and/or professional goals for 2015, or the tools/resources/practices that help you stay on track? Drop a line in the comments!

Here’s the one I just added to the list: I want to fail more in 2015.

You see, 2014 was a great year. But in some respects—especially when things got busy—I played it safe. As my grading stacks piled higher, I took fewer risks. As my planning lists grew longer, I stepped out of my comfort zone less often. And this tendency away from risk in the busy seasons stifled my overall growth in 2014.

The year before (not-so-coincidentally, the year I joined Twitter and started blogging) I took more chances, tried more new things. To be sure, I struggled and failed in 2013. Often, in fact. But every time I fell, I fell forward. These struggles and failures proved to be wonderfully productive, particularly with respect to expanding and deepening my educational philosophy, and closing the gap between that and my classroom practice.

So here’s my recipe for a growth-filled 2015: I’m going to take more risks. I’m going to fail more often. I’m going to develop a habit of stepping out of my comfort zone. When I struggle, I’ll do it productively.

And through this risking-struggling-failing-growing, I’m going to have my best year yet.

These are subject to change throughout the year (and possibly even during the course of this post), but right now my framework for getting better has three five categories:

• Implementing
• Creating and Sharing
• Reflecting
• Collaborating
• Transitioning

I’ll share a few goals in each category, not only to let others know what’s bouncing around my head as the school year begins, but also to force myself to organize my own thoughts and build in some personal accountability by leaving a paper (er, page) trail.

Implementing

In the few months I’ve spent engaging with other math teachers through reading blogs and following conversations on Twitter, I’ve been exposed to a wealth of rich mathematical tasks for the classroom. If the members of the #MTBoS are a chorus of angels on one shoulder, urging me to break out of my direct instruction-heavy approach to incorporate more rich problems and tasks, then my own experiences as a student, my initial teaching style, my tendencies toward control and perfectionism, and my at-times overwhelmingly-varied course load (typically four to six different preps) are a drove of naysaying demons on the other shoulder.

However, thanks to what I’m learning in Smith and Stein’s Five Practices (and reading on blogs), I’m gradually working up the nerve to take what I hope will be major strides this year. I’m finding the thoughtful intentionality of the five practices reassuring, as I’ve always feared relinquishing control of the mathematical flow of my classroom and assumed (incorrectly, I now believe) that this was a necessary part of implementing tasks and fostering student solution-centered mathematical discussion. As I try and fail and tweak and try again and retweak and find some measure of success along the way, I’ll reflect on these experiences here on the blog.

If you’ve had rich, engaging mathematical tasks on your “maybe later” list for a while, join me this year in making concrete plans to include them in your classroom on a regular basis. I hope you’ll reflect on your own experience, preferably by blogging about it, or at the very least by leaving the occasional comment on this blog. Speaking of concrete plans (and practicing what one preaches), here’s my goal:

One rich task each month in each course

Given my teaching schedule next year, that means 40 tasks. Excuse my while I go hyperventilate.

…

Okay, I’m back. And while I’m a bit freaked out by the prospect of shifting a core part of my teaching approach, I’m also excited about these 40 opportunities for growing in my craft next year. I think I’ll keep some paper bags in my desk at school, just so I’m prepared.

Creating and Sharing

The #MTBoS is full of amazing people. I regularly feel out of my league in this diversely awesome group, particularly in two categories: (1) thoughtfulness, completeness, and coherence in educational philosophy and (2) relentlessness in creating (and sharing) amazing resources. This year I want to shift my interaction with this community from primarily receiving to a combination of receiving and sharing. Not only out of a sense of gratitude for all of the excellent things others have made that I’ve enjoyed, but also because I think my quality as a teacher will grow through the practice of creating, sharing, receiving feedback, revising, etc.

As the school year begins, I’ll turn the lights back on at the Better Assessments blog. I have big plans for September (more on that later). I will also begin organizing a series of proportional reasoning challenges (tentatively titled The Running Game) so they’re available to other teachers as I create them throughout the school year for my own students. My 101qs radar will remain up, and I’ll try my hand at a few more Three Act tasks. This is distinct from my first goal since many of the bumps on the “creating and sharing” road will stem from my imperfect tasks (rather than imperfect implementation). At any rate, I’ll blog about both experiences here, and hopefully grow as a teacher through the process.

Reflecting

I suppose most of my posts in the coming year could be filed under this category. But it’s worth mentioning separately. When I started the blog earlier this year and saw a spot for a subtitle, I picked better through reflection. I want to get better at this teaching gig, and I know that reflection is a key means to that end. Over the years I’ve tinkered with different approaches to reflection, but nothing I’ve tried has been as helpful as working through my thoughts in a public forum. Knowing that someone else may read a post in which I reflect on the effectiveness of, say, my approach to homework leads me to be that much more thorough in my self-examination. I look forward to continuing more of the same this school year.

Collaborating

My first real #MTBoS buzz came from collaborating with Justin Lanier and Dan Anderson on Daily Desmos. Inspired by a tweet from Dan, I suggested a daily match-my-graph project. Several days later we had a head of steam, an unofficial endorsement from Desmos, and a growing team of collaborators. The entire Daily Desmos experience has been one of my favorite thus far in my #MTBoS tenure, probably because my involvement on this project fits more on the “give” side of the give-and-take scale.

While this next project has stalled (I’ll blame myself and summertime), I’m excited to kick start Better Assessments back into action. I hope others are interested in joining the conversation, but even if I have to fly solo for a while, I plan to forge ahead with some ambitious Algebra 1 assessment makeovers in September.

Transitioning

I’m looking for other ways to collaborate next year, particularly as I transition our department from the old Mathematics Content Standards for California to CCSSM. I’ll have some prep time set aside specifically for working through this transition (designing our courses, creating and curating tasks, developing SBG and performance assessments, etc.), and I’m hopeful that by collaborating with others on various projects (asynchronously, I assume) I’ll be able to multiply my own productivity and serve other teachers, school, etc., with the materials I/we create.

Join In, or Hold Me To It

So there you have it. My goals for the upcoming year. I invite you to join me in thinking about how to make the most of next year by writing your own Goals for 2013-2014 post, or by dropping a line (or link) in the comments. And I certainly hope people will hold me accountable now and again by asking how things (e.g., The Running Game, the Better Assessments blog, etc.) are coming along.