Question of the Week: May 30, 2011- Term Breaks

As of this morning my spring term is officially over! I always experience mixed feelings after every term. Joy and pride at the accomplishments of my students and the completion of another successful term of teaching, relief at the thought of a brief break, and excitement as I prepare for the upcoming term.

I spent the first two days of this week doing make-up lessons and the rest of the week is reserved for teacher work days. As my studio has grown, I've found that setting aside time for myself at the end of each term to wind down and evaluate as well as ramp up for the coming term is essential.

Here's a little summary of what I'll be doing the rest of this week:

1) Finalizing my summer teaching schedule
2) Completing student evaluations
3) Searching for and buying new music! (one of my favorite things! :) )
4) Finishing up my summer newsletter and sending it out along with parent evaluation forms
5) Preparing my summer studio practice incentive
6) Putting some more effort into my Piano Adventures Planners and working on designing a few more teaching aids/worksheets/games
7) Taking LOTS of pictures and posting many blog posts about it all! ;)

So that's a little sampling of what's in store for me over the remainder of the week. I hope I get some significant progress made!

How do you wrap up the end of your teaching term and prepare for the upcoming one? Do you take time to pass out studio surveys, do you do student evaluations? I'd love to hear ideas from other teachers on how you organize yourselves between teaching terms.