Creating A Summer Vision

Happy...Wednesday? Is that what day it is? I forget in the middle of the summer! Hehe. Today I've been super busy! Little Miss has been at Camp Grandma's for Vacation Bible School, so I've had the house to myself while the mister is at work...sounds peaceful, right? It would be EXCEPT we are currently trying to sell our house, which means a LOT of cleaning and re-cleaning has been taking place. If you've ever tried to sell a home, you know how it goes...the realtor calls wanting to know if they can show the house and OF COURSE you want to say yes because you want someone to buy this house, but then you have to run around like a crazy person swapping out every day towels for "fancy" towels and wiping down the counters with smell-good cleaning stuff and vacuuming the carpet so it will have vaccuum tracks so that MAYBE the people who come look at the house will think we are clean people and not the normal slobs that we are! Hahahaha. Funny because it's true!

Anyway, I'm sitting here at the coffeeshop while our house is being shown. I did a little bit of work while I was here putting together some updated calendars for this year. I'm not quite in fullblown planning mode yet, but one of my big goals for this summer was to put together a cohesive curriculum map for the 2017-2018. Our district provides us maps, which is lovely...only we have a separate one for each subject. Five maps is a bit too many to keep on top of, so I try to combine them down to one single calendar. That also helps us see where we need to focus our time and energy in any given week. If we have five weeks allotted to teaching weather but only one week to teach Ruby Bridges, it's easy to see which standard should get the most focus that week, am I right?

Speaking of summer goals...do you create a list for the summer? More importantly, do you have a summer vision? I didn't, really, until this summer. I got the idea from Angela Watson's podcast. (PS: If you don't follow her website or listen to her podcast Truth for Teachers, you should. She's really great and has wonderful ideas about how teachers can be more efficient with their time!) She has a great podcast about maximizing the potential for your summer and I recommend listening to it. After I was reminded about it and went back to listen to it, I was inspired to jot down my own goals and vision for this summer. This is what it looks like:

My vision for the end of the summer is:
1.) to have my fall semester mapped out with complete calendars (hey, that's one thing that's pretty much done!)
2.) to have some routines for working on my TPT projects (because during the school year I find it really hard to find the time for my store)
3.) to have a solid fitness routine in place that includes at least 10+ miles running each week
4.) defined procedures for working at work so I don't end up taking home stuff that I don't want to do at home

I even broke down each week of the summer with specific tasks and focus areas for each week. Now to some this may seem like a real joy-killer. "Who wants to micromanage their summer like that?!", you may be asking. Well, although it seems counterintuitive, this actually has helped me enjoy the last few weeks a lot MORE. Instead of having nagging tasks hanging over me (which, let's face it-without a timeline, I'm very prone to pushing the things I don't want to do 'till the end of summer and then lament that there was 'no time' to get it all done), I have them delegated. There's not too much for any one week! And when I really get down to it, some of the tasks that are on my "must-do" list are things I enjoy (going to the gym, running, working on TPT stuff). If I can accomplish this vision...I will feel like I had a productive, well-spent summer.

If this sounds like something you'd like to try, I HIGHLY suggest listening to Angela's podcast (Season 3 Ep. 20) or checking out her post about sketching out your summer here. I found it to be so inspirational and I think you'll get a lot out of it!

If you decide to try, I'd love to know what you think and what YOUR vision looks like!

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