It has been just about a full calendar year since I started this blog, and while I did not quite master the 1 post per week goal that I had set for myself, I think it has been a pretty successful run. In honor of the one-year anniversary of this blog, I’ve decided to tackle something that I find highly important in my life, and that is being able to hit the restart button.
I like to think of my life as something similar to a computer. Every now and again you need to shut all the programs down, power down for a bit, and then restart the system fully rejuvenated and ready to tackle new things. Outside of planning for the next school year and doing some professional development, I try to make it a part of my summer routine every year to restart our house. My wife and I both work full time and we have a four-year-old running around and demolishing everything in sight, so our house often looks like the aftermath of a tornado. Every summer I try to go room by room and reset everything, go through and see what can be thrown out, or see what could be moved to a different spot. I currently have one room totally cleared out and organized, and let me tell you, I want to just live in that room forever.
It is also time to restart everything at school. Summer was always busy with basketball, trying to prep for the upcoming season and skill building. It is also a time to start reaching out to my new editors and getting them ready for the new year of the newspaper. We set up our summer meeting date and I’ll be getting an agenda together for all of the team building and planning that needs to get done before we start our marathon into the school year.
My job also allows for a restart every year, which is a fabulous built-in benefit. I’ll be meeting over 100 new students, integrating new and returning newspaper staff members onto the new staff, reconnecting with returning teacher peers and meeting a whole lot of new ones. It is a chance for everyone to have a fresh start, and it is an important part of the school year. We can build new positive relationships and move forward to help everyone succeed.
This is also a chance for me to restart the blog. I started this last year with the civil rights trip that took staff and students through the South and had us going to many historic sites and meeting people who lived through history. I’ve been living vicariously through the group chat for the last few days since I was not able to go, but I’m currently writing this post from an airplane as we head on a family vacation that I suspect will be the focus of the next post. I wrote a lot early on about what was happening in my classroom and I have slowly expanded out and will be trying to write posts that appeal to a larger audience while still keeping my unique perspective.
Restarting can be stressful and scary to some people, but I think the more you embrace the idea of pushing a metaphorical restart button, the better chance you have of staying fresh and rejuvenated, and not losing track of your everyday goals.
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