teaching- year 9

My 9th year of teaching starts Monday, and each year I try to start of by reflecting on what I can do better this year than I did last year. I'm teaching all astronomy -super exciting!-and focusing all of energy on one prep should help me come up with some good lessons. I've been looking at some data on my student surveys from last year and the year before, and here's what I found...

2013-2014 survey results show that out of the students surveyed, only 50% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "I felt challenged by this class" (down from 52% the previous year)  I wonder if this data is accurate though, because I think some students equate hard tests with challenging, not just difficult tasks... which they had. The next 2 questions on the survey are interesting to me too, because 20% of the students agree with the statement "we had more work to do in this class than in my other classes" and 49% agreed with "we had more thinking to do in my class than in my other classes" (with neutral answers, these increase to 58% and 79% respectively). The fact that students do not equate work with thinking makes me happy.

Out of the students surveyed, 62%  agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "I felt like you had high expectations for me." (up from 48% the previous year)

Out of the students surveyed, 49% - agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: "We had more thinking to do in this class than in my other classes." (up from 46% last year)

As far as classroom management stuff, I think I'm going to try a few new things, but it went well. 84% agreed or strongly agreed "the grades I received reflected the quality of my work" and 90% agreed or strongly agreed "I was clear about the goals for this class."

So, after comparing data from last year with data from this year, I know what I really need to do is communicate high expectations and make sure the students feel challenged.  (Note: this student survey thing is not something I have to do, it's one I made myself and give as part of the final exam- it's also anonymous).

The good news is 97% of students that took the survey agreed with the statement "I learned a lot in this class."

I don't want to be too hard on myself, because this is the wordle that came out of the "if you could describe this class in one word, what would it be?" question:

but I heard a quote (I think on twitter) that said something like: "If you show me a teacher who thinks they have it all figured out, I'll show you a bad teacher."  True. So right now, I'm watching Legally Blonde (one of my guilty pleasure movies- not ashamed) because it gets me excited and motivated. If Elle Woods can be totally awesome, so can I. Grabbing my lucky scrunchie, it's time for some planning and time for some science.