It is the end of the school year here in the UK, and as such I felt it would be appropriate to properly review my time teaching in the UK education system.

As you are well aware, this year has been a challenging one, a veritable roller coaster ride of experiences. Even though it has been incredibly difficult at times, it has also been incredibly rewarding. I have felt myself grow by leaps and bounds as a teacher—improving my pedagogy, classroom management, resource creating, and organisation. I’ve also experienced a lot of things I know not to take back with me, things that make this job so much more difficult for teachers and students alike.

In order to organise my thoughts, I will be answering the questions from an end of teaching year review I found over at Minds in Bloom. There are 20 questions in all, so I will be making a series of posts to answer them all in sufficient detail.

These are the questions—I encourage you to use them (or others you may have found like them) to reflect on your own practice this year, and comment below if you have any revelations you would like to share! Alternatively, if you would like to share responses to many or all of these questions as a guest blogger, please get in contact!

1. What are some things you accomplished this year that you are proud of?
2. What is something you tried in your classroom this year for the first time? How did it go?
3. What is something you found particularly frustrating this year?
4. Which student in your class do you think showed the most improvement? Why do you think this student did so well?
5. What is something you would change about this year if you could?
6. What is one way that you grew professionally this year?
7. Who amongst your colleagues was the most helpful to you?
8. What has caused you the most stress this year?
9. When was a time this year when you felt joyful and/or inspired about the work that you do?
10. What do you hope your students remember most about you as a teacher?
11. In what ways were you helpful to your colleagues this year?
12. What was the most valuable thing you learned this year?
13. What was the biggest mistake you made this year? How can you avoid making the same mistake in the future?
14. What is something you did this year that went better than you thought it would?
15. What part of the school day is your favourite? Why?
16. What were your biggest organisational challenges this year?
17. Who was your most challenging student? Why?
18. In what ways did you change the lives of your students this year?
19. Pretend that you get to set your own salary for this past year based on the job that you did. How much do you feel that you earned (the number you come up with should be in no way based on your current salary – rather, come up with a number that truly reflects how you should be compensated for your work this year)?
20. Knowing what you know now, would you still choose to be a teacher if you could go back in time and make the choice again? If the answer is “no,” is there a way for you to choose a different path now?