It’s January 3rd and I am sitting in my favorite bar thinking about the idea of resolutions. In the past year, a lot has changed in my life. I went from a school-based setting to consulting. A job with a desk to a job with many coffee shops and anywhere that my hotspot may work. I am no longer bound by the confines of the school day or school calendar. For the first time in my adult life, it truly feels like the start of a new year.
When you are in a classroom, in a school, or even in a district, running on a school year calendar makes the new year feel irrelevant. The ball drops, confetti pops, you switch out “2018” for “2019” and move on to your next lesson.
On a recent episode of the post cast Pod Save America (“Pod Lang Syne.”) the hosts spoke to Crooked Media contributors about their New Year’s resolutions. Ana Marie Cox, a woman with many accolades including hosting With Friends Like These, said something that I haven’t been able to shake.
“I hate the idea of resolutions, I feel like they are oppressive.”
She has moved away from resolutions and uses intentions. Ana notes that where resolutions are more pass/fail, there is more flexibility in intentions. I find that as an educator there are many reasons why intentions are a more liberating option.
The Calendar Year v. The School Year Calendar
As an educator, I always felt the transition from December to January as purely ceremonial. Cool, the passage of time. At the end of the day, it was still the same school year. For me, the year started in August and went to the end of July. I lived on a school calendar year and my professional goals were adjusted to the school calendar.
With an intention however, I can drive one of my professional goals with a little extra zip. Say that one of my school year calendar goals was to increase parent engagement. Well, how am I going to do that? Maybe my intention is to call more parents each month. Now, more is a vague term. So, I would want to track this data. I can create a table in Excel and input information about who I am calling, when, and what I am calling them about (don’t forget positive phone calls!). The intention brings you back to the greater goal. Ana states that intentions, “force you to think about why you are doing this.” And at the end of the day, educators always want to know the why.
Coaching Cycles
For most of my career I was coached weekly. Each week I was given a goal, then observed, and the goal was addressed the following week. When you have a consistent series of goals it can be hard to imagine integrating other resolutions or intentions. However, there are a lot of ways to make it happen.
First, do not overthink the process. If you have consistent coaching cycles, you may have a midyear review process or a document with school-based goals. If you do, consider framing one clear intention around those goals. For example, let’s say a school goal is for all teachers to have 85% mastery on phonics assessments. Okay, well, how are you going to get there? What is your intention? The intention should relate to the why and be flexible in this situation. Maybe your intention is to provide feedback to all students regularly or to small group with cusp scholars. There are a lot of options here. Yes, some of these might sound like resolutions, but the key is to create something that you can sustain.
The Endless Teacher To-Do List
This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Sometimes, you have a lot of things on your plate. The key here is to prioritize. There will be weeks when you have bulletin boards due, parent teacher conferences, homework to turn in, and who knows what else. It is okay to give your intentions a rest for a day or two. If you burn yourself to the ground and there is nothing left for the students, then it was all for naught. Intentions give you flexibility where resolutions are absolute. Self-care is important as an educator, without you, the kids don’t learn.
Final Intentions
At the end, I share with you some of my intentions.
Blog more. I want to write not just more frequently, but on a wider variety of subjects in 2019. I am intending to also have more guest bloggers this year.
Read more and use the Brooklyn Public Library.
Drink more tea and less coffee.
Do you have an intention you want to share? Comment now!