Reflecting on Your Goals in the New Year

Last updated on January 7th, 2024 at 08:51 pm

First off, Happy New Year! I hope you took the time to really take a break and enjoy your time off from school, just like I did! It was time spent making memories with my family and taking time to recharge my body, mind, and soul.

Now that we’re back at it, or, maybe, you don’t go back until tomorrow-it’s time to think about how you want the rest of the school year to look. Most people talk about making New Year’s resolutions and set new goals for the year ahead. I don’t think of it in those terms because, for educators, our year is half over.

As we head into the second semester, I like to take time to reflect on the first half of the year. I think about the progress of my students, my professional goals, where I am at mentally, and how my work/home balance is doing. This is the time to either keep working on the goals you have for the year, adjust existing goals to be more attainable, or create new ones.

You may wondering how, exactly, to go about doing this.

The best way I’ve found is to review the goals you set at the beginning of the year and see where you’re at in relation to accomplishing each goal. For instance, one of my goals to help with stress was to write in a gratitude journal daily. Over the winter break, I took the time to look through my journal and see how I’ve done. I noticed that I had dropped the ball over the last couple months and hadn’t written in it. So, now I am going to renew that goal and get back to writing in my gratitude journal. FYI: I love the gratitude journals from Denise Albright. If you haven’t checked them out, I highly recommend it.

Another example. Reflecting on my students’ progress, I was hoping for better. I know I can’t control how well my students retain new skills and when they choose to use those skills, but I do have some control as to how the material is presented. Unfortunately, I don’t have as much control as I would like, but I work with what I’ve got. So, for my students who are still having difficulty retaining short vowel sounds, I purchased sound cards with the picture of a child’s mouth forming the sound with the letter on each card. I, also, purchased mini-mirrors. My plan is to incorporate the use of those tools into my lessons. It is my hope, that by making those changes, my students will make a stronger connection between the vowel letters and sounds. Thus, making it easier for my students to recall the sounds when reading.

So once you review where you’re at in your goal, you decide if you’re satisfied with the progress you’ve made towards achieving it. In my first example, I am, clearly, not satisfied. But rather than creating a new goal, I resolved to get back to continuing my original one. In the second example, I am not satisified either. I adjusted the timeline of my goal and changed the means of accomplishing it. The curriculum provided just wasn’t cutting it.

Sometimes a goal you have set for yourself will seem impossible. I encourage you take another look. Most of the time when you take the goal you set and break it into smaller goals with more manageable steps, you can achieve that once impossible goal. You may just have to wait a little longer to get there.

Make sure to keep in mind the things you can control and the things you can’t when creating your goals. This will help to make them realistic and attainable-two of the qualities of a SMART goal. If you’re unfamiliar with SMART goals, it stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. If you’re unfamiliar with a SMART goal, feel free to read more about them here.

I wish you much success in achieving your goals in 2023! If you feel inspired, please share one or two of your goals in the comments, so we can all send you encouragement to keep striving for them throughout the rest of the school year!

Here are links to the two items I mentioned purchasing for my students above. These are affiliate links and I will earn a small commision if you choose to purchase an item.

Disclosure: The links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.