Teacher Confessions: The Habits We Can't Seem to Shake!

Being a teacher means juggling a million things at once. Some of them we handle like pros, and some... well, let’s just say we develop some irritating habits that no number of good intentions can fix. I know it’s not just me, so here’s a list of my teacher confessions - bad habits that drive me (and probably you) up the wall every year.

The Planner Optimism Spiral 

Let’s talk about the planner itself. I spend hours scouring the internet for the perfect one every December. It needs to be a magical planner that will keep me organised all year. And I do mean hours, cross-referencing size, space for writing notes, pretty covers, and room for stickers. Finally, I buy one, convinced it will transform my chaotic teacher existence into Pinterest-worthy lesson organisation. Come January, I’m so proud of myself. I print my timetable, colour-code it like a boss, and stick it into my new planner with care. Not only that, I take it one step further, I stick a daily version of my timetable on every single page for the first couple of weeks. It’s going to be a game-changer this year. But then something happens. By week four, the planner sits there, judging me. Sure, I still write in it, but the colours aren’t as precise, and maybe I’ve skipped a week or two (or five). Google Classroom creeps in and before I know it, I’m fully reliant on my digital system. The planner? Oh, it’s there, buried under a pile of unmarked papers. The shame.

The Great Planner and Diary Dance

I have a planner. It’s perfect. But I also have a diary. Some days, I try to merge the two like some kind of super-organised teaching ninja. It’s a solid idea, but it never works. One minute I’m all about the teacher planner with its handy day-per-page layout. Then, I’m scribbling random thoughts and reminders in a separate diary that’s supposed to keep my life outside of school organised. I flip between the two, and at some point, I start trying to cross-pollinate, transferring stuff from one to the other like I’m grafting lesson plans onto life admin. It’s chaos! And to make things more complicated, there’s the whole digital vs. paper dilemma. One day, I’m totally committed to my Google Calendar and Classroom. The next day I’m writing out my to-do list in my planner again. Eventually, I lose track of both systems and end up not knowing where I’m supposed to be half the time.

The Mysterious Meeting Notes

I arrive at the first meeting of the year armed with a fresh, dedicated notebook, every year. In my mind, this is the notebook where all the important things will live, action points, brilliant ideas, and those little gems of wisdom from colleagues that I’ll definitely need to remember. But inevitably, that notebook vanishes into some black hole of my desk. So, I find another one and decide that this is THE ONE… and then I lose track of that one too. By the end of the year, I’ve bounced between up to five different notebooks and can’t find anything I need!

The ‘Clean Routine’ Illusion

Every year, I tell myself I’m going to get my life together, not just at school, but at home too. This is the year I’ll have a routine for organising dinner. I’ll meal prep, I’ll keep the kitchen and dining room spotless, and we’ll never have another “what’s for dinner?” panic at 7 p.m. We’ll eat healthy, home-cooked meals at a reasonable hour, and I’ll be the picture of balance. In reality, by the third week of term I’m scraping together leftovers or ordering pizza, and the dream dies a slow, inevitable death, buried under a mountain of marking and sheer exhaustion.

The Student Notes That Never Last

At the beginning of each year, I have the best of intentions. I’m going to keep detailed notes on all my students. I’ll write down what each student does well, what they need to work on, and any little personal observations that will make writing reports a breeze. I even set up a specific notebook for this purpose. It starts out well too, maybe I will make a few notes in the first couple of weeks. But then, that notebook goes the way of all my other good intentions. It disappears into the depths of my bag or gets buried under a stack of papers, never to be seen again until I stumble across it long after reports are due. By then, it’s too late to be useful.

Printing Panics

There’s nothing quite like sending a carefully crafted worksheet to the printer only to discover that the margins are wrong, the text is misaligned, or (my personal favourite) you forgot to select double-sided printing. Of course, you can’t reprint it straight away because that would blow the budget and raise the eyebrows of your HoD. So, you do what every teacher does, stash that misprinted pile somewhere out of sight. Then you quietly reprint, trying to look casual while pretending you aren’t single-handedly draining the department’s printing budget.

The End-of-Year Amnesia

You’d think after years of teaching I’d remember what I taught the previous year once all the assessments are done. I never do. I tell myself at the end of Term 4 that I’m going to keep excellent records of what worked, what didn’t, and what I absolutely must repeat next year. I even have a folder for it. Or at least I think I do. Come November, I’m frantically pulling together last-minute resources for those tricky final weeks. I’m scrolling through Google Drive, thinking, "Did I actually teach anything last year?" I throw something together and get through it, only to stumble across absolute gold from last year halfway through the unit I just improvised. The worst part? This happens every year. Do I learn? No. I’ll probably do it all over again next time.

The Download Disaster

For someone who considers herself a bit of a techie, my Downloads folder is an absolute wreck. Every year I promise myself that this will be the year I keep it clean. I mean, how hard can it be to download something and immediately file it into the correct Google Drive or OneDrive folder? Simple, right? Well, apparently not. I download a document—tell myself I’ll sort it out later—and "later" turns into "never." Then when I’m in a rush to find that one specific file, I have to search through a sea of "Document(1)", "LessonPlan(2)", and "FinalVersion_REALLYfinal." Why do I never learn? It’s like I have memory loss when it comes to downloads. And then, by the end of the year, the Downloads folder is a digital wasteland that I pretend doesn’t exist until I can’t avoid it anymore.

There you have it! A confessional of the little habits that keep us in a constant state of mild irritation. Whether it’s planners, printing, or those ever-elusive meeting notes, we teachers are united in our quirks. Maybe, one day I’ll get it all together… but let’s be honest, probably not.