My primary goal as a first year teacher is to establish a classroom community of mutual respect, where we feel apart of the same team, the same family, who learns and excels together. Gratefully, I have been introduced to scholars, experts and community activists, like bell hooks, James Baldwin, Linda Christensenn, Sonia Nieto, Jim Burke and Doug Lemov, whose writings and work inspire me to maintain the compassion and respect required to have such a classroom.  I continue to reach back into these texts for everything from lesson planning to classroom management, each of which requires that I have the same compassionate, critical and creative mind I expect of my learners.

It is also essential that I continue to learn and study the vast body of literature, past, present, fiction and nonfiction, print and digital, visual and aural texts so I am as knowledgeable and skilled in my content area. I have recognized my own deficits as a literature student and have begun reacquainting myself with some of the classic texts I may be teaching our students.

Equally important, is that I privilege students interests, while exposing them to worlds they have not yet entered, but provide them with the kinds of insight and experiences that allows us to interface with the worlds they may become apart of.

It is also imperative that I stay abreast of the continuous studies on best pedagogical practices and updates in education policies so I may implement them as mandated as well as necessary to improve my practice. The Department of Education website provides tons of information on developing lessons and using best practices to get students toward achieving mastery of the standards they will need to exceed in and beyond their K-12 journey.

Last year, I attended some of the "What Works in Urban Schools" professional development sessions. I found these workshops useful and will continue to attend any professional development sessions throughout my first year and beyond.

As for now, I expose myself to the other experiences and insights of both novice and well-seasoned teachers on the following sites, where I read as well as participate on discussions on English content and teaching English Language Arts:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/5-ways

LinkedIn: Higher Education Teachers

LinkedIn: English Teachers Anonymous

LinkedIn: English Language and Literacy

http://www.lauracandler.com/Teacher Resources