Happy New Year, Teach Happier community!
New year, new you?
Nope.
New Year. Same Us.
Bless.
As we usher in 2025, we may need to apply a small shift in thought – we are not starting over, we are simply beginning again. We get to take all our experiences and lessons learned in all our years prior into this new year of 2025.
Although it is indeed the same us, we can’t deny that something magical happens when we flip our calendar to the next year. Many of us feel a small surge of optimism, energy, and clarity that almost says, this is what I see for myself in the upcoming year. How do we begin again as content, aligned, and steady as realistically possible? I’m making a small shift to an idea I already love, and sharing it here in the event you would want to do the same as you begin again.
If you’ve heard me speak at your school district or organization, I often reference a favorite creation by author Gretchen Rubin, her Happiness Project: One Sentence Journal. I’ve shared that writing in that journal for ten seconds at the end of the day is my most impactful practice. It helps me live in a space of gratitude on really great days and really challenging days. It’s a practice that helps me live a fully lived human life as a rational optimist.
25 in 25
A close second place favorite Gretchen Rubin creation is her New Year’s List. I referenced these last June when we were invited to make a “7.4 in 74” list. That’s when we took our 74-ish days of summer and created a short list of 7.4 things what we’d want to do, experience, accomplish or enjoy in those blissful summer days. That was a spin on Rubin’s original idea: Whatever the year is, we are encouraged to create a list of the things we’d want to do, experience, accomplish, or enjoy. Since this is 2025, we are invited to make a list of 25 things. I’ve been doing this for the past three years and keep my list in my notes app so I can reference it wherever I am. This practice has always served me well because it helps tired March or October Suzanne remember what optimistic January Suzanne wanted or envisioned. It keeps me focused on the things I want to say yes to and helps me discern my next right thing.
I started my 2025 list in mid-December, and something happened when I got to idea #7: Figure out how to share great classroom ideas inspired by the Teach Happier space within the Teach Happier community. As I typed it out, I felt exhausted. I already felt overwhelmed by it all because the six things above that were new things to add in 2025. Thinking about adding an additional 18 things seemed way out of reach.
As I begin again this new year, I don’t want to necessarily add 25 more things into a busy life as a teacher, instructional coach, mom, wife, friend, and all my other important roles. In this season of life, I simply cannot add 25 things to my plate, even if it’s stretched over a 12-month period.
Start, Stop, Continue, & Consider
So, I made a small adjustment to Rubin’s idea and it’s already serving me well. I thought about how I could organize these 25 ideas into 4 buckets: What do I want to start? What do I want to stop? What do I want to continue? What do I want to consider? This helped me have a say as to what gets added to my plate, what gets removed from my plate, what stays on my plate, and what could potentially find a place on my plate.
Organizing my list in this way helped me reflect deeply as I discerned my next right things. The starting and stopping were easiest for me. I had to think a bit more critically about the continue column. I didn’t want to include things that are a routine habit for me, but rather reflect on some of the things I tried to develop in 2023 or 2024 and just couldn’t make a routine habit, or natural thing in my life quite yet. The consider column gave me a place to dream and envision.
Here is a glimpse of just a few things from my “25 in 25” list organized as start/stop/continue/consider. I am sharing in hopes that it helps you discover how you could organize what you envision in 2025:
| Start | Stop | Continue | Consider |
| Finding a place in the Teach Happier space to share classroom implementations from Teach Happier Community members.
Planning college visits for our daughter. Teaching our son to drive. |
Scrolling social media in the morning. Replace with something more inspiring and thoughtful (ask Laurie and Jim for suggestions).
Filling all weekend time with things. Schedule down time for pockets of intentional silence and rest. Booking back-to-back speaking engagements. Spread them out a bit more, especially in the Fall. |
Writing new teacher book & leadership book (July deadline!)
Teaching 6th grade enrichment writing class Helping others who are interested in writing, speaking, etc. Unsubscribing to emails regularly and in real time. Picking up groceries after school on Friday (to avoid doing this on the weekend!) Recording and editing podcasts by Thursday for Sunday release. |
Getting a new professional photo.
Making a year-long plan for renewing National Board Certification. Finding an exercise routine that adds strength-training.
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This idea of beginning again and taking in what we’ve learned about ourselves in 2024 and bringing it into the new year can help us harness some of the optimism and clarity that naturally comes as we start a new year. This can help us sustain our contentment and alignment as we take care of our headspace and heartspace in all our roles and work and at home.
What’s on Your List?
What do you want to start, stop, continue, or consider? When we reflect and think through our upcoming year in that manner, we are able to impact our personal and professional lives by making small shifts in our thoughts, language, and actions in order to move through our days as content, aligned, and grounded as realistically possible. We can invest our time so we can do, experience, accomplish or enjoy the things we should in 2025.
What a wonderful way to begin again.
Small Shifts, BIG Gifts!
Give it a try! See it you can think of 25 things you’d want to do, experience, accomplish or enjoy and organize them in terms of what you’d like to start, stop, continue, or consider.
About Suzanne Dailey
Suzanne Dailey is a proud member of the Teach Better Family! She is an instructional coach in the Central Bucks School District where she has the honor and joy of working with elementary teachers and students in 15 buildings. Suzanne is Nationally Board Certified, a Fellow of the National Writing Project, and has a master’s degree in Reading. She is dedicated to nurturing and developing the whole child and teacher. Suzanne lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.
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