My New Years Teaching Resolutions A Veteran Teacher Talks Goal-Setting

My New Years Teaching Resolutions A Veteran Teacher Talks Goal-Setting New Year’s resolutions are an important part of our personal and work lives. Veteran teacher, TeacherVision Advisory Board Member, and mom Jessica shares her approaches to creating New Year’s teaching resolutions. by Jessica Peresta New Year’s resolutions can be as simple as setting a word to focus on for the upcoming year, or as complicated as setting and detailing a number of goals you want to achieve. When you’re choosing which resolutions you want to set, dig deep and focus on ways to improve as a teacher. As part of this process, ask yourself some hard questions. What will help you to gain traction in your teaching? Can you be more patient? Give yourself time for self-care? Connect with those hard-to-reach students during the rest of the school year? Whatever resolutions you choose, make sure you remember that they’re yours and no one else’s. Your resolutions won’t look like anyone else’s, because you’re unique, and have your own teaching style. My Teaching Resolutions First of all, let’s talk about my resolutions and then we’ll talk about examples of other resolutions you could set. For me, I want to focus on being less stressed. I need to prioritize my tasks better and truly cross things off of my to-do list. I’m tired of having a “zombie” to-do list! I tend to procrastinate and wait until the last minute when it comes to planning lessons and tackling everything else I need to get done. I also want to get better at focusing on family time and really putting my work down at a good and reasonable time at the end of the day. I’m a big believer that work and family time should be kept separate. Does that mean I won’t ever need to work when my kids are home? Of course not! But my goal is to get better at truly making “quality time” actual QUALITY time. Strategies for Making Your Resolutions OK, now it’s your turn. Think about your own life. What’s caused stress this year? What goals do you want to achieve in the coming weeks, months, and year? To get going, start out by getting out a piece of paper and a pen. Label a list from 1-5 or even 1-10. Then, start writing down any goals you want to achieve. You could even have two lists...one for your personal life and one for your teaching life. Here’s an example of what my list might look like: Organize my time better Create fun and engaging lesson plans Connect more with my hard-to-reach students Take more time for self-care Collaborate more with my team Spend more time with my family Go on that vacation I’ve been dreaming of Give myself grace when I mess up Accept positive criticism Try not to bring work home at least 3 times a week The main point of this exercise is to write down resolutions and then try to achieve them as the year goes on. There’s something truly powerful about putting your thoughts down on paper. You could even hang your resolutions up somewhere so you can see them as the year goes on. Or, if you want to get even more technical, you could even set one goal for each month of the year. After You've Made Your List After you’ve made your list, now it’s time to actually achieve your goals. How many times have you made resolutions and then gotten to get to the end of the year and realized that you definitely didn’t stick with them? (I’m sure I’m not alone here!) While you’re making your list, make sure the resolutions you’re setting are specific and actionable...but also easy enough to achieve. Don’t set goals that you’ll never meet - that will just lead to frustration and a feeling of failure. Also, don’t overwhelm yourself with too many resolutions. Also...give yourself lots and lots of grace. If you don’t achieve the goals you’ve set and feel like your resolutions aren’t being met, then you can always set new ones. You don’t know where you’ll be 11 months from now or what your students will need from you. You will also change as a person. So, instead of beating yourself up for not achieving something, just set new goals and add them to your list. Be mindful of progress - it’s more important than perfection. Happy New Year! What are your New Year's teaching resolutions? Share with us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Jessica Peresta is passionate about providing other music teachers, especially those right out of college or new to teaching elementary music, with the music education resources, lesson plans, teacher training, and community you've been looking for. She believes your domestic life outside of school should be spent soaking up time with family and friends and your music teacher life while at school should not leave you feeling defeated, but should be a joyful, exciting, and rewarding experience. To find out more about Jessica and her passion, visit her at The Domestic Musician.