New (School) Year's Resolutions

A year ago today I was moving into my sweet little townhouse here in Knoxville.  I had just been offered a teaching job a few weeks prior to that.  I was anxious as to what the new school year would bring.  I had also recently discovered the wonders of Pinterest and was staying up until the wee hours of the morning pinning ideas for my new Pre-K class.  Pinterest is amazing for many reasons, but some of the best things I've discovered on there have been the incredible teaching blogs out there.  All year I've gotten amazing inspiration from teachers around the country.  That being said, I'm going to attempt to create a teaching blog myself.  I think it will help keep me motivated to keep sharing creative ideas this year.  I'm very excited about this upcoming school year.  I'm all settled in.   I'm in the same classroom.  I know the staff.  I've become familiar with the curriculum.  I just have a good feeling that this year will bring great things!

That being said, there are some things I want to remember this year:

1) Stay on top of this new blog!  I want to make sure I'm posting frequently enough so that each entry doesn't feel like an overwhelming "catch up" post.

2) Be early to school every day.  I'm not much of a morning person.  I'm usually sliding in 5-10 minutes before I go on contract.  Cutting it so close on a daily basis starts my day with completely unnecessary stress.  It's not worth it.  I'll just have to break off my relationship with the snooze button.

3) Pack healthy lunches.  My snooze button dependency also creates a problem when packing my lunch.  Grabbing a sodium-packed lean cuisine takes less time than making a turkey wrap and putting grapes in a plastic baggie.  I need to start working on fixing my lunch the night before.

4) Enter anecdotal notes daily.  My school requires that I take anecdotal notes.  Nothing new there.  Nothing too difficult for me. BUT...I also have to type, code, and submit them online.  Doing this is extremely helpful as far as organization and information retrieval goes.  However, I am terrible about staying on top of this.  I let my notes pile up in the spiral notebook and then when I sit down to type them all in, it's miserable.  This year, I'm setting aside 15-20 minutes at the end of each day to do this.  It'll save me in the long run.

5) Have fun with the kids and never stop learning!  Self explanatory. :)

I can't wait to meet my 18 new kiddos!