As a teacher, there are some things that I hope to see or have happen in my teaching career before I retire. Of course, I am just finishing up my sixth year of teaching, so I have several decades to meet all of these bucket list goals. I can also acknowledge that some of these things I’ve done before as well – but for now, I want to just put them down so I can come back and check them off as I finish them up!
1. Teach an AP class.
As a high school teacher that is endorsed in social studies and English, I have a high chance of this happening – plus I love teaching upperclassmen classes too.
2. Feel confident in an AP class and my curriculum.
To add onto number one, teaching an AP class is one thing, but feeling confident in your abilities and curriculum is another thing. This takes years of teaching the curriculum and reflecting on what are the lessons that worked well.
3. Coach a state championship individual/team.
4. Have my teacher besties at work.
I’m someone that struggles with putting myself out there and making friends, so having those teacher besties is hard sometimes! Plus life makes people come and go. But having that core group of teacher friends that I can rely on and hang out with makes the job so much better!
5. Make enough money to not have to put medical bills on the credit card.
I feel like this is a given. I would like to stop going into debt with medical bills. This is a reflection of teacher pay AND the American health insurance system.
6. Present at a conference.
Big or small – but present on something!
7. Take a former student out to lunch.
8. Attend a graduation where I know every single student graduating.
This one will be hard, as I don’t have every student in my class. But I would just love to go to a graduation where I know every kid. That takes teaching for several years at the same school though – at least at the school that is as big as mine!
9. Have a year where I don’t have a brand new prep.
Every year of my teaching career, I’ve had a brand new prep to teach. It makes the year stressful, so I would love to have a year where I can use a full year of something that I’ve already made!
10. See the end of required state testing.
Always dreaming!
11. Work in a brand new school.
My school right now is under construction to be a brand new building and is like 5 years out of being finished. So I’m just waiting!
12. Have a year that I communicate with every student’s family once (for positive reasons).
This is just a goal that I keep wanting to implement as part of my family communication at the secondary level. When you have over 150 students, it’s hard to send communication home all the time, especially personalized!
4 Comments
Great list! I’m not a teacher, but I’m an OT and an homeschool mom and I 100% agree with seeing the end of state testing!
My bucket list would be to connect with teachers and schools to do virtual author school visits.
I love this bucket list and appreciate you sharing all your goals and aspirations! Which AP class would you want to teach?
This is such a great list!
Wow! A great list…. as a teacher slowly transitioning out of teaching I feel like I have no more buckets or bucket lists left. It is great to read such personal goals related to your career that you have decided yourself rather than trying to achieve those imposed on us by line mangers or others. This year I created a list of 100 challenges for myself to achieve and am working my way through them… some silly like take myself out to lunch and others which have more personal meaning to me, in fact today I am going to get my wedding ring and engagement ring re-sized which has been something I wanted to do for ages but didn’t see it as a priority. Writing it down makes it important.