We live in a time when increasing accountability and measuring performance is the norm. From healthcare to manufacturing, businesses across every sector have become hyper-focused on output and ROI.
Education is no different, with schools forced to become more accountable for student outcomes. And while we love our jobs and wouldn’t change places for anything, we find it challenging at times – especially when it comes to raising our accountability levels, discovering new ways to measure performance, and creating more measurable goals.
After all, we know that the more accountable we are as teachers, the better the student outcomes will be! Thankfully, you can do many things as a teacher to raise your accountability level and increase your performance at work. Here are some suggestions that will help you achieve just that!
Keep a reflective practice journal.
One of the most important things you can do to increase your accountability levels at work is to keep a reflective practice journal. In this journal, you will want to focus on your performance at work, your goals and objectives, your challenges, and the solutions you have put into place to overcome them. You can even go so far as to break down each week and include what you plan to achieve in each of those weeks.
During the journaling process, you will want to be strict and disciplined with yourself. Journaling can be challenging for many teachers because of the work involved. However, it’s an essential part of the process, and if you commit to journaling regularly, you will find that it becomes much less of a burden.
Have frequent and varied check-in times with stakeholders
Teachers often struggle with balancing their professional and personal life, and many feel they need to put their professional life ahead of their personal life to succeed. Unfortunately, this is false and will lead to burnout and deep unhappiness. And while it’s essential to be accountable to your students, parents, and colleagues, it’s also crucial that you are responsible to yourself. And one of the best ways to do this is by having regular check-in times with your stakeholders. For example, if you work for a school, you likely have a principal you report to.
But, in addition to reporting to your principal, you should also have regular check-in times with the following stakeholders:
– Students, including their parents
– Colleagues
– Mentors/coaches
– Yourself.
While having these check-in times might seem like a lot, you must make time for them in your schedule. The more you check in with your stakeholders, the more accountable and happier you will be.
Set small but measurable goals for yourself and your students
When you are setting goals, they must be small and measurable. If a plan is not measurable, you will never know if you’ve achieved it or not! This is why, when setting goals for yourself, you should break your larger goals into smaller ones. This will help you feel better about what you’ve accomplished and give you an idea of how much work you have left to do before you hit your larger goals.
When setting goals with your students, it’s also important to be small and measurable. However, it would help if you were careful about what you are putting your students’ goals for. You don’t want to set them for the wrong reasons, and you don’t want to set them for things that aren’t important. Instead, you should set your students’ goals for items that are important and that will have a positive impact on their lives.
Celebrate the wins!
Although it might not feel like it sometimes, teachers are winning in their classrooms daily; from inspiring students to learn to inspiring them to love learning, there is a lot that teachers can celebrate. Too often, though, we get so wrapped up in what we didn’t do that we want to do next time that we forget to celebrate what we did. And while learning from our mistakes is essential, it’s also crucial that we learn to celebrate our successes.
Don’t be afraid to fail. Learn from it!
Part of being a successful teacher is also being a confident teacher. And while confidence is important, one way that teachers can lose faith is by being afraid to fail. And while it’s important to celebrate our successes, it’s also crucial that we learn from our mistakes. And one of the best ways to do this is by not being afraid to fail. Of course, a time in your teaching career will come when you make a mistake. But that’s okay! Everyone makes mistakes. And when you make a mistake, you need to own up to it, consider whether it was avoidable in the first place, and learn from it so that you don’t make it again.
Commit to continual learning and professional development.
One of the best ways to increase your accountability levels is to commit to continual learning and professional development. By taking time out of each week to learn something new, you can educate yourself on new practices and methodologies and become a better teacher overall. However, in addition to taking time out of each week to learn, you should also commit to lifelong learning.
There is so much to learn, and if you don’t remain committed to education and self-development, you will never be the best teacher you can be. To increase your accountability levels, you need to know what works and doesn’t. You need to understand what your students respond to and what they don’t. You also need to know what is helpful for them and what isn’t. And the only way to do this is by researching!
Take care of yourself. You’re human too!
Finally, as we’ve already mentioned, you must take care of yourself. You are human too, and if you let yourself get run down and tired, you will not only be less productive but also less enjoyable to be around. And this will reflect negatively on your students. To take care of yourself as a teacher, you should make sure that you get enough sleep.
Sleep is essential for our health and well-being, and it’s when our brains do their most important work. This is why sleep deprivation can have such a negative impact on our performance. And sleep deprivation is a common problem among teachers. Unfortunately, teachers are among the most sleep-deprived professionals. This is mostly because we have to work long hours, including weekends, and our jobs are often highly demanding and challenging.
The good news is that there are ways to improve your sleep quality. To get more sleep, make sure you go to bed regularly every day and eliminate blue light and screen time, as they can hinder your sleep.
Conclusion
Accountability is often viewed as a negative thing. But when teachers are more accountable, they can better serve their students. To increase your accountability levels and better serve your students, you can do a few things. Keep a reflective practice journal, have frequent and varied check-in times with stakeholders, set small but measurable goals for yourself and your students, celebrate the wins, don’t be afraid to fail, research, and commit to continual learning and professional development. Most importantly, take care of yourself. You’re human too!
