The Big Fresh August 5, 2017 Resolutions for a New School Year

Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out immediately.

Charles M. Sheldon

Summer is when we all think about things we’re going to do differently next year.  Like that annual water thing. We go out and buy a gigantic jug and resolve to fill it every morning—and promise ourselves we will drink every drop. We do this valiantly, for a week or two, anyway, and then a whole year passes without a proper gulp.

There are other feeble promises we make to ourselves—we’re going to leave school each afternoon with our email inbox empty; we’re going to be so well prepared that there are never any last-minute copies needed; we’re not going to let that one nasty parent email overshadow the 500 positive and grateful ones.

Alas, by mid-September, most of those promises are broken.

Maybe instead of the same list of hopeful resolutions, let’s think of some realistic ones. Here are three easy ideas to think about as you move toward the first day of school.

Experiment with “losing” your Friday night instead of Sunday night. That stack of student work you have to manage over the weekend? The one that hangs out in the back of your mind, from Friday afternoon until Sunday night? This year, try challenging yourself—even if it’s just once—to stay at work Friday afternoon and bust through that stack. You’ll be tired and grumpy, but if you think about a Sunday night with nothing to do, you’ll be motivated to finish. And Sunday will feel like the best gift you’ve ever given yourself.

Stock up on whatever you need for Taco Night. You know how some people panic if they don’t have eggs, milk, and bread at home?  I’m like those people, too. Except for me, I must have the fixins for tacos. It’s important for me to know that no matter how much energy I’ve spent on any particular day, I always have a pound of ground beef, some flour tortillas, cheese, and a jar of decent salsa. Whatever your thing is—the meal that makes you or your family happy, the one you have made so frequently you can put it together in 15 minutes flat—that’s the stuff you should make sure to always stock in the freezer or pantry.  Dinner. Delicious. Done. And stress dissipated.

Stop hauling around stuff because you might get to it.  We all do this. We have a giant bag, and every night we stuff it with folders, pencil boxes, stacks of papers, professional books, fiction books, nonfiction books, and perhaps a half-full water bottle, a leftover sandwich, a set of Legos… who knows. Whatever it is, we haul it home, flop it on the floor in the foyer, see it from our eye’s corner all evening. Then haul it back to school, where we unload it on our work spaces. And then, at the end of the day, we load it all up again. This year, go realistic and light. Bring home only what you are 100% sure you will be able to complete at night. Only the stuff you must complete, really want to complete, or will have time to complete. Everything else?  Let it be.

I could suggest 100 other things we do throughout this school year to help stay happy, positive, and feeling good. Most of them (especially that water thing) are just too hard to sustain when things get really busy and overwhelming (and when we remember how inconvenient it is to have to pee all the time). Regardless of what you do differently (these three things or three other things that work for you), I wish you all a beautiful start to a new school year.

This week we look at improving student writing notebooks. Plus more as always — enjoy!

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