A Teacher “New Year’s” Resolution

As teachers, we never really understood New Year’s Resolutions.  It seems like an arbitrary time of year for life improvement.  Of course, these resolutions are made after the excesses of the holidays, but are they ever really successful?  It may be because life in the new year is much the same as the one before it.

It makes much more sense for us (and perhaps anyone with school-aged children) to think of August/September as the time to make resolutions.  When children go back to school, it creates the need, once again, for structure and routines.

The start of the school year is the natural time for teachers to make resolutions.  A new school year means changes at work.  You have new students, new classes and new initiatives.  You also have a chance to reflect on past years and improve your practice.  For example, my personal goal has been to ‘flip’ my classroom with a site called Edpuzzle.  In my social studies classes, I want to try to lecture less and do more learning activities.

Lifestyle Creep

As a family, we have also had a chance to reflect more.  Living as international teachers, we benefit from many luxuries and a limited amount of expenses.  Our grocery bill is probably a bit more than would be back home, but we definitely have less opportunity or temptation to spend money in our everyday lives. (except on vacations)

Despite this, we have become victims of ‘lifestyle creep’.  ‘Lifestyle creep’ happens when you make choices that seem easier in the short-term but are not needed, and expensive, in retrospect.  Our compound includes a hotel as well as the long-term residences.  As residents, we have free cleaners come twice a week.  We can also get room service delivered to our villa.

This is amazing!

But living with a hotel nearby is also very dangerous.  It is very easy to fall in the trap of not wanting to cook and just order room service.

These little choices are something that everyone (no matter where you live) must make every day.  “Should I get up early to make coffee or just buy Starbucks on the way to work?”  “I don’t feel like cooking, let’s just get a carryout.”

When reflecting on our situation, we noticed that often, we would take the easy, and more expensive way.

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Preparation

For us, it comes down to preparation.  Our default, when faced with uncertainty, is to take the easy option.

In the past, a typical conversation would be:

What do you want for dinner?

I don’t know, you?

I don’t know either.

Let’s just order from the hotel.

We had done a good job prepping our lunches every day, but our dinners have been a bit haphazard.  Lindsey has taken it upon herself to organize our dinners.

                                                         Behold! Our Dinners!

We usually plan for three weeks in advance.  There is a rotation of tried-and-true recipes and we sprinkle in new ones to try out every so often.  We do this so when we go shopping at the weekends, we know exactly what to get and don’t increase our food bill by buying things that we don’t need.

So far (and we are only about a month in) there have been noticeable differences.  We probably spend about $30-40 less per week on groceries as a result.  Strangely, we have more leftovers than we are used to as well.  Also, our hotel bill is noticably less. (We have also cut down on our snacking from the convenience store on the compound!)

Like any New Year’s Resolution, the real question remains whether or not we can keep it up.  I am confident that we have systems in place to see us through for the school year.

Do you have any back-to-school resolutions?  Leave a comment below