Some Summer Goals

At last the school year is over and there is a breather. I know that a lot of folks think we teachers have it easy --- 3 months off, etc. but all of us who teach know that isn't really as true as it looks. We actually have 8 full weeks off, plus a few days on either end. In that time, yes, we get a chance to unwind, decompress, relax and have some fun. But most of us also have to get professional development training, new units prepped, old units modified for the incoming students, catch up on professional reading, and go in to our classrooms to prep them for the next year before we're officially on the clock. So while we may look like we're at ease, most of us have lots of professional tasks to do. We're just not inside the 4 walls of the building surrounded by our students. I think that was the biggest challenge to overcome when I first started teaching --- just how much work HAS to be done when students aren't in your classroom. My husband just rolls his eyes now when we are traveling on vacation and there's a museum or activity available "that's just perfect for my kids. Let's go check it out."

So on top of all the usual professional tasks that I have lined up these next 8 weeks, I have a few "personal" goals to accomplish.

1. Get started on renovating 2 upstairs bedrooms that are sorely in need of new ceilings, new wallpaper, new flooring. We live in a 100 year old house which we bought almost 30 years ago. At the time, the bedrooms were in okay shape, and we promised our boys that we would repaper their rooms with more boy-appropriate paper. They have grown up and left home, and the once pretty floral paper is way-past pretty. The plaster ceilings have cracked too. (It wasn't that we were ignoring the renovations, they just weren't the first priority - kitchen, bathroom, family room, garage collapse one winter, all were more pressing.)

2. Declutter the house as much as possible

3. Establish a new, organized office space for my husband's business, and for me. This included buying an ergonomically correct computer desk. I spend a lot of time at the computer both for the business bookkeeping, and for schoolwork. I realize half my back/shoulder issues are because the keyboard tray isn't wide enough to hold the keyboard and the mouse, so I spend too much time stretching between surfaces when I'm entering bookkeeping data.

4. Visit with my knitting buddy regularly and actually do some knitting together.

5. Find a regular, uninterrupted meditation time and get the practice firmly established so that I can keep it up when school starts again.

6. Finish watching Battlestar Galactica. I am only at season 2.5.

7. Get a handle on my diet/exercise routine. I have gotten way off track.

So those are my personal goals for the summer. It's a rather daunting list, but I'm optimistic!