Sunday, July 29, 2018

Changing it Up

Routine is great, until it stops working.

Routine is great, until you're in a rut.

Routine is great, until it's not.

Sometimes, change isn't necessary, but sometimes, it's exactly what you need.

When I was working, I found that when I was falling into a pattern that was more out of "this just how I do it" instead of "this is the BEST way to do it", I'd make a change. I would even step out of the box and change up how I drove to work, what I did for lunch, when I graded worksheets, how I managed choir attendance. Everything.

So now, I'm thinking forward to September. I know, I know, why put off until September what you can change tomorrow? But I'm a planner, remember? And I like the idea of new year, new start, so the start of the school year seems logical. As we got toward the end of last year, I'd been pulling work for the week and putting it in a folder, so they'd have the week laid out. That way, if they got more done early, they'd be ok, and if they got behind on Monday, they could catch up.

In theory, it should work. And it did for a while. And I was teaching how to manage your own work! Letting them have some autonomy! Teaching them, in a real way, what happens when you procrastinate initially. So it wasn't initially a disaster, and it really should have worked.

In practice, it was a pain in the butt. I was pulling work out on Monday mornings, stuffing folders, and we were NEVER making it through everything. They'd both seem to save their "I need help with this" work for the same times, meaning that I was pulled in two different directions. They were ending up with a huge backlog at the end of the week, and we were behind, and frustrated and struggling more than we should have been for such a simple system.

So now, I'm changing it up. I spent the summer going through ALL the curriculum. I plotted out every chapter, month, week and day. I'm using an actual lesson plan book and charting out everything.

It wasn't working, so I changed it up.

I need to be more willing to do these things in other parts of my life too!
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