The New Year is here and we cannot believe it! The past year has been a crazy one and we think it is fair to say that we are all ready for this Winter Break. Besides staying in pajamas as long as possible and playing with our kids, we are also using this Winter Break to make our New Year’s Resolutions for teaching. Here are our goals for 2022!
Spend more 1:1 time with our students!
With everything going on the last few years, it has been hard to feel connected to our students like we used to. With switching between virtual and in person learning and social distancing rules, a lot of the activities we used to use to connect with our students just aren’t possible anymore. This year we want to make it a priority to spend more 1:1 time with our students. We’re challenging ourselves to spend 1:1 time with at least one student each week this year!
Stop taking work home on the weekends!
We’re pretty sure some version of this is on every teacher’s list of resolutions most years. We used to be really good about this! Unfortunately with all the changes to teaching that happened over the last 2 years, keeping boundaries between home and school has been hard! We are setting out to start off 2022 by stopping taking work home on the weekends. (If you see us on stories with work on the weekends, make sure to remind us of this one.)
Spend less time on social media!
Social media can be such an amazing tool. We love the sense of community it builds and it is after all the way we connect with most of you! 
One thing we’ve noticed the last few months though is how social media can easily turn into a comparison trap. Seeing other teacher’s perfect classroom setups can easily make us feel like we are failing. We hope that by spending less time on social media we can focus on the pluses and less of the negatives!
Refresh our space and get organized!
Speaking of perfect classroom setups, our classrooms are far from Pinterest worthy at the moment! We aren’t setting out to do a full class makeover or anything but we would like to refresh our work space so that we feel re energized. This holiday season got messy in our classes and we want to start off the new year by getting organized!
Have more FUN in the classroom!
This might be the resolution we are most excited for. We want to have more fun in the classroom! When we sat down together to write this list, we realized that so much of what we wanted for the new year had to do with having fun. We want to have fun so that we are happier and more balanced people. Having fun helps us connect with our students and build our class community. It is why we love teaching! We want 2022 to be FUN!
One fun memory we have from 2021 is building a huge fort in our classroom with our students. Then we spent the day reading stories, making shadow puppets, and playing games. We will definitely be repeating this idea in 2022!
We hope you’ll join us in following some of these New Year’s Resolutions for teaching. Even better, set some time aside this Winter Break to make your own! Take the time to think about what you want from the new year and the steps you can take to achieve it.
Happy Holidays!
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