Happy New Year!

As a teacher, my calendar always operated a little differently than most grown-ups. My internal calendar ran August to the first week of June. The rest of June and July existed outside of the constructs of time. Ask a teacher what day of the week it is during the summer and she probably can't tell you! I have a friend who calls herself Summer-Kelly during those precious weeks between school years. Summer-Kelly is her alter ego who gets to stay up late and eat lunch with adults in restaurants.

Before someone gets all "must be nice to have summers off" snarky, let me clarify that not attending school each day doesn't mean we aren't doing loads of school-related things--planning, reading, taking classes, cutting out mountains of laminating for next year. But when you get to do that in soft pants or while binge-watching Netflix, you might forget that you 're doing it for zero summer pay.

So when I moved from a school to the district office, my summer alter-ego pretty much disappeared. This is a year-round gig, so I have to save Summer-Amber for Fridays and weekends like the rest of the grown-up world. That also meant that my internal calendar had to add June and July back into the mix. I'm still living a hyphenated year (Hello 2015-2016!), but my new year starts in June now instead of August.

Of course, ringing in the new year wouldn't be complete without New Year's Resolutions, right? For me, I realized that I wanted a better way to track my work flow. In a classroom, lesson plans are a pretty efficient way to track what's happening during the day. Even in the classroom, I used sticky notes and lists to keep track of my things to do, but that system wasn't nearly as effective in my new role. Thanks to Pinterest, I found Bullet Journal.



I've officially been at it for one whole day now--a record for keeping a New Year's Resolution in my book! Really, I am posting about my attempt at Bullet Journal-style organization as a way to keep me working at it. I think it's actually a pretty good system for me because it's totally flexible and doesn't require special tools or anything that stands as a barrier to getting started. My plan is to post my progress every so often to see how it's working for me.

I think for most teacher leaders, keeping up with the stuff that's not teaching kiddos is the hardest to manage. If that rings true for you, maybe Bullet Journal is good for you. What have you tried -successfully or not- to manage your time?