I feel like I have blinked and the year is over. One more year has gone and another one to start fresh with starts now. As we reflect on the past year it is important to think about all of the successes, challenges, and failures experienced. They are what has helped shape us, change our mindset, and make us into the educators we are today.
I love this time of year because it is a time to reflect and remember that I am right where I am supposed to be. I hope the New Year brings you that same peace of mind knowing you are exactly where you are supposed to be at this point in the school year and in your personal life.
How many of us start of the year with a resolution just to drop it within the first few weeks of the New Year? Why is it that all people do this? Maybe it is because we are setting goals for ourselves that are not obtainable or we get frustrated because we don’t see the results we want soon enough. Our intentions are always good but our motivation and dreams sometimes fall to the wayside. And if we as adults can’t keep our New Year’s goals, how can we help our students strive to reach their goals?
Reflecting and revisiting on previously made goals is an enlightening experience for students (and adults as well). When we start out the school year we learn about our students, their strengths and weaknesses, and together we set goals for the school year. Then before we know it, the New Year is upon us. It is a great time to ask ourselves “Have I reached my goals?” If the answer is no, then you might need to analyze why that is.
Often times we get so busy with the hustle and bustle of everyday life, we forget about our goals or fail to adjust them as time moves us forward. And guess what? It just so happens our students do the same thing. So as we prepare to head back to school, how can we support students and ourselves in setting goals and achieving them? After all the the New Year is a great time to refresh our lives and create a beautiful story for yourself.
It’s important to talk about the new year as being a blank slate or an open book ready for new opportunities, possibilities, challenges and yes… failures. Without challenges and failures, learning can’t take place. It is those things that help strive to reach our hopes and dreams. And what better time to set new goals than starting a New Year and perhaps a new semester?
Failure is character building. It is a mindset shift that students need to build confidence and gain the skills needed to face adversity in life, in and out of the classroom. We all have the power to write our own stories by the choices we make. Making good choices for ourselves helps us to write the story we want for ourselves.
When you return to school after break, encourage students to achieve something that they have never achieved before. Help them get excited and focused. Have students think about something they couldn’t do yet or thought they’d never achieve at the beginning of last year but have achieved it at some point in the year. Share and celebrate these successes and use this as motivation to get them thinking about what they hope to achieve in the upcoming new year so they can finish out the school year strong.
You can use Post-it notes and stick them to the wall to show off what students have accomplished or just have students write it on the whiteboard. If you have space, give each student a piece of paper and have them write a success on one side and a goal on the other side.
Remind students (and yourself) that achieving hopes and dreams takes time, dedication, consistency, and work. And remember, what the new year brings can be determined by the actions we take plus the hard work we put in to see progress, growth, and success in reaching the goal. It’s definitely not easy but what has come easily to those that have reached success?
Happy New Year from Creative ASL Teaching!
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