It is a New Year’s Day and time for a fresh start. 2018 will be your year! Only not just yet.
You must resist the temptation to do school work today of all days. Even if the fog from that New Year’s Eve party does lift after a bacon sandwich or two, you must resist the urge to indulge your new and improved 2018 self by attempting to do a whole half-term’s worth of work in one go.
Instead, step away from your laptop and listen to these eight commandments for what you should not attempt to do today under any circumstances:
1. Thou shalt not plan any lessons on New Year’s Day
The year is already going be stuffed full of lesson planning and carting dog-eared resources back and forth between classes. Do yourself a favour and save cutting up card sorts for a day when you aren’t seeing double.
2. Thou shalt not covet thy spreadsheet
Be honest: you don’t have the foggiest idea of what a level 4 or 5 will look like on the new GCSE. None of us do. And I daresay the Department for Education doesn’t either. So, put down the markbook and give yourself some time off from the tyranny of tracking.
3. Thou shalt not touch a PowerPoint
The urge to fiddle with a font size is no doubt compelling. Still, fight it off. It really doesn’t matter. In fact, you can go ahead make this a resolution for the year; endless hours tweaking resources is not time well spent.
4. Thou shalt not check thy email
Switch your email off completely to make sure that you aren’t tempted to sneak a look. Spend time with your family, gorge on an entire box-set, but just stop poring over emails.
5. Thou shalt not send any emails, either
We should all cast our judgment with Old-Testament-style wrath to anyone who sees it fitting to send a work email on New Year’s Day. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say about progress checks today, so don’t even consider it.
6. Thou shalt not waste your time seeking out stationery bargains in the January sales
Novelty post-its and multi-coloured pens might be just the trick to brighten up your classroom, but are they really worth spending hours fighting through the crowds of bargain hunters for? Give it a week at the very least before you replenish your stock.
7. Thou shalt not do ANY marking
I declare this the most important pronouncement. Don’t think about purple pens, stars and wishes, WILFS and WALTS, or whatever your school’s latest marking fashion is. If a pile of books is calling you from the other room, shut the door and turn up the volume on whatever TV marathon is nursing you through the day.
8. Thou shalt not think about the work you still have to do
You devote yourself to teaching a thousand times over during the course of a year. Allow yourself this one day to rest and recuperate. New Year’s Day should be a chance to remember to be kind to ourselves, and to others. And for everything else, there are another 364 days in the year.
Alex Quigley is an English teacher and director of the research school at Huntington School in York. He is the author of The Confident Teacher.
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