New approach for the new year

Teachers will always be confronted with issues big and small, and while it may not be possible to resolve them all in the year ahead, having the right attitude does bring about better outcomes.

Teachers will always be confronted with issues big and small, but having the right attitude does bring about better outcomes.

WHETHER they admit it or not, very few people are completely unaffected by the knowledge that one year has ended and another new one, just beginning.

There often rises up inside you an unbidden feeling that one more year of your life span is over. Once again you have finished a year but questions sometimes linger in the mind about how you finished it.

To some it may have been a glori- ous, successful year where many of their goals were achieved, others may have marked this year as a milestone in their personal lives. Perhaps they got married, welcomed a new member into the family, got a promotion or changed jobs.

Others may heave a sigh of relief reflecting on the many challenges 2017 had for them, heave a sigh of relief that 2017 is finally over and hold on to the hope that if things couldn’t get any worse, they should get better.

Then of course there is this whole thing about making or just thinking about New Year resolutions. Even if you are a little cynical or not into the hype about New Year resolutions, there is in all likelihood, one tiny part of your being that wants to believe you can actually make an improvement in at least one small aspect of your life in 2018.

The broad definition of a New Year resolution is a promise you make to yourself to accomplish a personal goal, improve your behaviour or lifestyle in some way in the year ahead. Among the most common new year resolutions are to improve physical and mental well-being, by having a healthier lifestyle, spending more quality time on relationships that matter, improving finances, quitting bad habits, becoming more spiritual.

Other popular resolutions involve aiming to improve careers, becoming more organised, think more positively, and even enjoy life more.

Time and again however, studies have indicated that despite the enthusiasm and confidence with which resolutions are set, more than 75% of them are not followed through.

Unrealistic goals are stated as the main reason for this. Other reasons include people not keeping track of progress with some just forgetting about the resolutions. There were even resolutions that failed because there were simply too many to be kept.

Remaining hopeful

It is the same thing for teachers too. Regardless of how the previous year has been and despite our outward proclamations of how it is going to be “same old, same old” this year around, deep down we do hope that things will be better for us this year.

We do hope that the duties and classes allotted to us this year would be closer to what we have wanted for ourselves.

Many of us also hope that after waiting for so long, we are finally eligible for that pay jump.

Whether we keep a written record or not, we do want to do things better this new year. Maybe we made a few mistakes in 2017. Perhaps we didn’t approach certain situations or relate to certain colleagues the best way we should have.

Maybe if you had given more thought to the initial planning of certain school projects you were in charge of, things would not have gone awry half-way.

Perhaps if you had learnt to delegate tasks to others and allowed them to take responsibility and ownership for their duties, you wouldn’t have felt so burnt-out last year.

And who knows, maybe if you had been a little nicer to the person who sits across you in the staff-room, you may have gotten to taste her home-made nasi-lemak more often.

Looking back, you now know what you could have done better and perhaps that is one of the best things about a new year.

It is like being given a brand new chance to do things all over again. Perhaps some of your duties this year are new, and look formidable – but that could really be a good thing for you because it gives you an opportunity to rise to the challenge and showcase your strengths and potential.

You could also be in a situation where nothing much seems to have changed. You may have been given the duties that are at the top of the “most undesirable teacher duties list” and the same “challenging” classes again, three years in a row.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice. T.S. Eliot, (American poet)

But even if they are the same “old” duties you grudgingly had to carry out last year, this year, you are in a better position simply because you have gone through them, you know what worked and what did not.

You are able to gather the best parts of last year’s experiences and hone them to even further brilliance this year.

You are also able to discard those parts that didn’t work right from the start, modify or try new approaches.

There are things of course that you can’t change in your school. No matter how much you wish you had a new more capable or knowledgeable principal in the new year, that may not happen.

No matter how much you wish your school had not been selected by the education authorities for some special project in 2018 that entails a lot of extra duties for teachers – that too is out of your control.

But what is in your control for the new yearis your attitude. It is how you react towards situations that actually determine your level of contentment and even happiness with what you have been assigned.

Some of the things about 2018, we can predict, but some will come as a surprise. There will be some situations that we will ease into smoothly and others that may knock us out of breath.

So, in a way I think one really good resolution for the new year would be to do with improving attitudes – changing the things we can change, accepting those we can’t and knowing that if we need to, we can always then draw wisdom, grace and strength from a higher source.