If we become aware of what’s happening before we act, behavior becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.
Marshall Goldsmith
If you were just getting to know your class or a small group of students, how would you figure out where they need to go with their learning? Everyone comes with a set of instructions, right? There’s a roadmap from the previous year or previous quarter, and it spells out what to do, right?
Of course not.
Yes we have curriculum, and yes we have plans that work across multiple groups. Yes we have instincts and yes we have tried and true methods, but we need to get a baseline. We need to ask certain questions, we need to get certain information so that we can make an informed decision going forward.
So, what’s stopping you from improving parts of your life? What’s stopping you from getting healthier or finishing a specialization to improve your teaching? What’s stopping you from improving your relationships or your communication.
You don’t have a baseline. You think you do. You think you know what you do from day to day, but we know memory is fallible. You make up things as you go, and it’s not done maliciously.
So, let’s start today. You want to eat better? Start a food log. Use the Fitbit app to log food for calories. Sign up for Noom. Make a habit of logging food and you will not have to rely on your memory about whether or not you ate well today. It will be there.
Want to exercise more? Make sure you have something that’s counting your steps. Log how many you get in during a week and make a plan to carve out time for more steps. It will keep you off the couch or maybe encourage that 5 minute after lunch walk.
Need to get better at the practice of being an educator? Baseline your planning time- are you spending too much time or not enough? How much time are you spending reading or sharpening the sword and getting better at what you do? Could a colleague baseline some aspect of what you are doing with some interprofessional observation and follow up?
If you want to get better, you need to know where you are. You can only learn where you are if you spend a little time setting up a baseline. When you know where you stand, you can move forward.
