New Year's Re-Solutions

Check out Inspired Teaching's interactive 2022 in Review Newsletter for a fun recap of our impact in the past year and our plans for the year ahead! View it here.

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By Aleta Margolis , Founder and President

Happy New Year!

For many of us, the New Year is a time when we make resolutions – promises or commitments to ourselves or to others toward positive change. The word?resolve?means determination to get something done, and that’s an important goal for all of us to take into the New Year.

But if you add a beautiful hyphen, the word?resolve?becomes?re-solve, and that means to solve something again. And the word?resolution?becomes?re-solution, meaning another, or different, solution.

A few weeks ago, I?wrote?about the benefits of stepping away from a problem or?puzzle, and returning to it with fresh eyes. As we embark on this new year and prepare to return to schools and classrooms, what problems might benefit from re-solving?

Put another way, are there problems that you have “solved” that might benefit from another look or a different solution?

Perhaps you solved the problem of teaching your lesson on photosynthesis or FDR’s New Deal by designing the perfect PowerPoint or finding the best YouTube video. How might you re-solve that problem by redesigning the lesson to make it more student-centered, or even student-led?

Perhaps there’s a person who holds a viewpoint with which you disagree. Maybe you’ve solved that problem by minimizing contact?with that person, or avoiding them altogether. What might be the benefits of re-solving that problem by deciding, for instance, to spark up a conversation with that person, not for the purpose of changing your views, or theirs, but from a place of curiosity about what makes them think and feel and act the way they do?

Maybe there’s a student who often engages in unwanted behavior, and you have solved that problem in a punitive way. What if you make an attempt at re-solving the problem in the new year by trying to figure out what unmet needs that student might be expressing, and striving to address those needs?

What problems might you and your students work on re-solving together? What if you offered students the opportunity to pick a problem or two they’d like to take a stab at re-solving??

Even the usual?New Year’s resolutions like exercising more or eating healthier foods or spending more time with friends can?be viewed as the re-solving of problems. Exercise helps re-solve the problem of a sedentary lifestyle; eating healthy foods can re-solve the problem of too much sugar; spending more time with friends is a step toward re-solving the problem of the isolation brought on by social distancing these past few years.

What are your New Year’s re-solutions? We’d love to hear from you here, or on social media using the hashtag #2023InspiredREsolutions.??

Share your Re-Solutions here!

Wishing you a joyful, meaningful year ahead.

Resources

Want to give your students practice crafting re-solutions? This?Lesson Planning Guide to Re-Solving Problems?offers a structure and discussion questions that guide students in thinking through a problem and re-solving it.