3 tips to help you start the New Year thriving in teaching

The New Year can fill you with optimism, hope and excitement.  

After the hedonism of Christmas – the gifts, the drink, the food – you feel like you have rested enough to begin the New Year in school utterly smashing it!

Yet, this can be quite a tall order. 

One moment you are chilling on the sofa watching all of the Christmas specials.  Then you expect yourself to immediately switch into teaching mode.  And an outstanding version of that. 

New Year’s resolutions put you under enough pressure as it is: pressure to lose weight, earn more money and be a different and happier version of yourself.  

Although you may have good intentions for the New Year in school, what you risk is applying too much pressure to yourself and exhausting yourself in the first week back.

So, how can you make a positive start to the New Year and thrive in teaching? 

1. Be realistic

Own the fact that you have just had two weeks off, that getting up at 5:45 am will initially be a tall order and that leaving the warmth of your bed on a cold January morning may not immediately fill you with joy. 

Rather than expecting yourself to go into the first week back guns blazing and rocking it left, right and centre, acknowledge that it may take you a few days to get back into the swing of things. 

Not only that, your students will also be feeling the post-Christmas slump.  Show kindness to them too by gently bringing them back into the day-to-day life of school.  

If you are someone who chooses to make New Year’s resolutions for school, make sure that they are S.M.A.R.T.:

• Smart
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic 
• Time-bound

Remember, a New Year’s resolution isn’t just for New Year.  It is for the Whole Year.  

A great book to read to help you make small, incremental changes that add up to something big is Atomic Habits by James Clear.  

2. Put you in your own diary

It is so easy after a half term break to eradicate yourself from your own diary in exchange for school work. 

Yet, this can lead to resentment (especially after the festivities of Christmas) that leads to you pining for the weekend or the next half term break. 

Suddenly, you are wishing your life away.

Instead, remember that you are a human being first and a teacher second. 

You deserve to have a work-life blend that enables you to thrive in teaching and in your life too. 

Therefore, make sure that you insert yourself into your own diary this term.  

You have a copy of the school calendar.  You know the dates for parents’ evenings, twilights and extra meetings.  Now, you can put in things that matter to you.  Pre-organised nights off, dinner with family and friends, exercise classes you want to take.  

Make sure that you put yourself into your diary otherwise, teaching will happily insert itself there for you. 

3. Begin with boundaries

The beauty of New Year is it feels like a clean slate, a fresh start.  It empowers you to think that anything is possible and that you can achieve anything you put your mind to.

And if you are wanting to thrive in teaching, there is no better place to start than creating clear boundaries for yourself. 

Boundaries are the red tape that you put around yourself to protect and promote your wellbeing.  They enable you to create the work-life blend that you so desire.  

So, pick a couple of boundaries to practise putting in place this New Year.  Start small and build yourself up.  Here’s a few examples to inspire you: 

• Go home early and have a night off once a week (stick this in your diary ahead of time!)
• Switch off email notifications and remove emails from your phone
• Give yourself an end of work time every day and stick to it
• Go to bed at a regular time, ensuring you have 7-9 hours good quality sleep
• Prepare yourself a healthy lunch the night before and enjoy eating it in your lunch break, without working

Also remember that it is ok to make mistakes.  Sometimes your boundaries will slip and that is ok.  What matters is how you respond to this happening: do you shore up your boundaries or do you just let them fall by the waste side?  

If possible, avoid breaching your boundaries twice in a row.  Ultimately, boundaries are habits.  Habits are formed through repetition.  Therefore, if you miss a habit twice in a row, you risk creating a new, unwanted habit.  

If you would like more support creating clear boundaries, why not sign up for the beta version of Teacher B.O.U.N.D.A.R.I.E.S.: The Course?  It is available in 2022 only to members of my Facebook group and is half price until the end of 2022.  

Gemma Drinkall is an Educational Wellbeing Coach, helping middle leaders in education to create clear boundaries so that they can love teaching, and their lives, again.

Want to get in touch? Book a free, no obligation virtual coffee chat here: calendly.com/headsphere/bookacallwithgemma