It’s that time of year again (already!). Actually, the term is not quite over – we still have three weeks of tutorials, mock presentations and final presentations/exam marking BUT “teaching proper” finished today (at time of starting to write! now also known as Friday 26th August!) – I had my final lesson with my lovely JFBE1a group (January Foundation Business and Economics – but I teach them AES – Academic English Skills – NOT Business and Economics, thankfully!). I’ve had them for 2.5 terms (not quite 3 as they didn’t become a group until after IELTS-based streaming in Week 4 of their first term here) and it’s been so lovely working with them. They are pre-Bachelor degree students so still youngsters really. We don’t necessarily keep our groups for all three terms – sometimes a group might have a different teacher each term, or one teacher for two terms and another for the third, or one for the first term and another for terms two and three – so I consider myself very lucky to have done so with this group! Our academic years, however, are four terms so I had two groups from the September cohort in the September term (first term of the year), who were also lovely (but seem a long time ago now!).

Aaaanyway, I know very well that I will be, shall we say, pressed for time the next few weeks (!) and then I’ll be on holiday (woohoo!) so thought I would get a head start on the old end of year reflection.

A lot seems to have happened this year!

• My fixed term contract became open-ended (woohoo!), meaning for the first time in my life I now have job security, in as much as it is possible to in this day and age.
• I did a full year of ADoSing this academic year (my two term ‘trial’ at the end of last academic year went well enough for me to continue in role – always good!) and have continued to thoroughly enjoy working on the ADoS team. I’m a lot more confident now than I was (it really helps having a manager who is very positive about my capabilities!) which also helps – if I recognise my strengths, I can build on them…
• Recently I took the role of Joint Teacher Development Coordinator for our centre and so far have put out two bulletins, with another – final one for the term – due out next week – very excited about this role and what I can do to help teachers develop!
• I completed my SFHEA application (yesterday! *also known as Thursday 25th August!) – it’s not ready to submit yet, I need to put it into the portfolio platform when they unveil the one they are changing to from Pebbledoodah, but I’ve done all the donkey work for it.
• I received two recognition awards from the powers that be (as did the other ADoSes, of course) – one for “‘going the extra mile’ especially with the massive contribution to AES development (in February) and one, “an exceptional contribution award” (today – 26th July – may not still be today when I get round to publishing this :-p )
• I discovered Mindfulness, and as well as transforming my own life with it, have started to experiment with it in the classroom with promising results thus far – something to build on! (But that’s another blog post, when time allows…)
• I wrote a book chapter for Routledge Handbook of Materials Development (recently got the first draft feedback back, so it’s back on the “list of things to do” – eek!)
• I’ve done multiple Futurelearn courses (Dyslexia and Foreign language learning, 2 x Mindfulness, Developing Professional Resilience – which is still in progress) – I love learning!

All in all, it’s been a very positive year despite the tragedy that marked the beginning of it (losing my beloved Alba horse to colic).

A couple of things I realised today (*at time of writing, possibly not at time of publishing!):

• Some years ago now, I discovered that I didn’t get a CELTA pass A because one of my tutors thought I wasn’t resilient enough. Today I realised that I’m really glad they made that decision. Because, perhaps if success (Pass A) had come easy, I wouldn’t have been quite so determined in all my future endeavours in the profession.
• I am as excited about the future now (and the possibilities that lie ahead with regards to teaching, ADoSing, TD coordinating) as I was at the end of my CELTA session on continuing professional development/making a career out of ELT.

Things I am looking forward to in the next academic year:

• Using my role as TD coordinator to build up a culture that puts teacher wellbeing at the centre of teacher development (my current passion!) – already got some innovations in the pipeline (watch this space!)
• Developing my ‘helping teachers’ skills in my ADoS role
• Continuing to work with Mindfulness both in terms of myself and in terms of using it with students
• Continuing to develop and grow as a teacher, try new things in my lessons and make them as beneficial as possible for my students
• Finishing that darn book chapter! (Well, the next deadline is end of August so that might/should technically happen before the next academic year starts…)
• Hopefully getting to IATEFL again (I’ve written a proposal but need to go through my institution’s selection process AND – if successful in that – IATEFL’s selection process.
• Learning more!

(NB As you will have noticed, I have focused on the positive. This is because, thanks to the negativity bias, it would be all too easy to ignore the positive in favour of the negative. Being positive about what I have achieved does not mean the next step is to put my feet up and stop putting any effort in, it just means I will be starting the next chapter with a “can do, can learn” growth mindset rather than an “I’m rubbish, why bother?” fixed mindset. 🙂 )

If you have a September to August academic year, what have been your highlights? What are you looking forward to for next academic year?