My Goals for the School Year

It’s a new era for me with my kids in school all day (Ella is still home part of the day because she does hybrid homeschool but she’s pretty self-sufficient).

I’ve been thinking about this new school year and what I want out of it.

Here are some of my personal goals for the 2023-2024 school year:

Personal goals for the school year

1. No phone before the girls go to school. I wrote about this last year after I did it all summer long and it was the biggest game changer for me (I still hate how much of a difference it makes and it’s a struggle for me every single day).
2. Eat lunch with Bart. Although we’ve both worked at home for the last several years, we’ve rarely eaten lunch together during the school year because half day preschool or kindergarten has meant I had a short amount of dedicated work time, so I always ate at my desk. This year, I’m looking forward to setting aside 20-30 minutes for us to eat lunch together while everyone is gone.
3. 30 minutes block of reading during my work day. This is a really exciting one for me – I’ve never had reading as a part of my work because my work time has been so limited. Setting aside 30 minutes to snuggle up with a book during my work block is something I’ve been looking forward to for the last year!
4. End my work day by planning for the following day. One of my biggest concerns about having more work time is that I’ll be less efficient and end up wasting time. I’m setting an Alexa alarm to go off 10 minutes before school ends so I can wrap things up, write up my to-do list for the next day, and clear off my desk so it’s ready for the following day and I can hit the ground running the next morning.
5. Turn off my phone for 90 minutes when the girls get home from school. My phone usage is always hard for me (see #1) and I want to be fully present when the girls get home from school. I’ll use my trusty Forest app to keep myself honest so I can enjoy snack time with them and help get the post-school routine under way.
6. Eat lunch with the girls at school or volunteer once a month. I’m never going to be the person volunteering to be room parent, but I like being at the school occasionally, whether it’s eating lunch in the cafeteria with my girls or signing up to help with a class party.
7. Better planning for Friday adventures. My girls get out of school early on Fridays and I like to use that time to kick off the weekend in a fun way with some sort of outing. My goal this year is to do a better job planning for that so we know what we’ll be doing each Friday afternoon.

What is the school year going to look like for you? What are some of the things you’re focusing on this coming year? I’d love to hear!

if you liked this post about my goals for the school year, you might like these other posts:

• Do You Set Fun Goals?
• 25 Fun Back to School Traditions
• How We Are Doing Hybrid Homeschooling