Last week, I wrote my New Years Teaching Resolutions. One of them was to “share my lesson plans with other teachers in a consistent and organized way.”  There are so many ways to share links and drinks, but what about our favorite worksheets? Mine usually stay hidden away somewhere on my computer or worse yet in a file cabinet in my office. I hate the idea that I spend hours creating handouts for my class and they rarely get used again. Sometimes, I give them to other teachers. Most of the time, we share hard copies, which is such a pain if you want to edit something.

So this year, my goal is to share more and share better. I want to share the electronic copies of all of my lessons. I have a few ideas of how to go about it. I could start putting them all on my personal website. I could use another website. Something with a community feature would be great so that I can easily get lessons too.

So far, I have two ideas: connexions, or a wiki. The first is something I stumbled upon today, but it might be worth looking into. Wikis, on the other hand, I am familiar with. I have used a wiki to share lessons before. Last time, I used a wiki to share pronunciation lessons with other interested parties. People shared things, but they rarely posted lessons. So I am going to have to give the first one a try and maybe look for something better. Do you have any ideas?

I have had my fair share of teaching revelations over the last year and hopefully I have really learned from each of them. They have made me realize how I can improve. Next year, I have six teaching resolutions:

1.  Integrate students’ personal and work lives into the curriculum.
2.  Increase students’ computer literacy through active use of technology.
3.  Present grammar rules and information deductively. (Let them figure it out.)
4.  Tap into students’ motivation to learn English.
5.  Share my lesson plans with other teachers in a consistent and organized way.
6.  Continue to love what I am doing.

Some of these resolutions aren’t exactly new. I talk about using technology all the time and I have mentioned integrating students’ careers into the classroom. Still, this is my list. My list of resolutions. Keep checking back as I work on each of these resolutions. If anyone has any advice, please tell me. Especially with sharing lesson plans and connecting with other teachers!