Setting Goals in Unusual Times: An Interview with Jessica Peresta

In this episode, we’re speaking with music educator Jessica Peresta. Jessica is a music teacher who spent time in the classroom and now works to support teachers through mentorship, curriculum development, and her resources at her website The Domestic Musician, and through The Elementary Music Teacher Podcast.

We talk about her memories of learning music as a child, a great practice tip, and have some real talk about how to think about making goals and preparing for a new year as teachers and parents who may feel burnout or exhausted. This conversation was really helpful for me personally and I hope it will be for you too!

Time to Practice Podcast Episode 23: Setting goals in unusual times with Jessica Peresta

To Listen to the full episode you can find the Time to Practice Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also listen directly from the link below:

Highlights Include:

On setting goals in 2021: “I think it’s hard. It is definitely hard pandemic or not to set goals, but I do in my personal life, in my work life, and as a parent. I do make goals for personal growth, work, growth, parenting growth, what growth I want to see in my children, in my marriage. Every area of life, I think it’s important to set goals and it’s okay. You know, if you get to the end of the year and you haven’t reached that particular goal, you’ve set for yourself in whatever area, it’s okay if you didn’t reach it. But I think setting goals and having something to aspire to and to strive for is so important. It keeps you going and it keeps you driving towards it.”

“I am such a type, a personality too. I like all my ducks in a row. And I think I gave this analogy to someone last week. It feels like my ducks are swimming in circles right now. They’re not in a row. I can’t get them in a row, no matter how hard I try. It’s funny because I speak to my audience all the time about balance and how balance doesn’t look like the scale in the store where it’s weighing the two pieces of fruit balance is not going to always have everything equally aligned in your life. It’s not gonna be like a pie chart with 20%- everything around is equally going well, there’s gonna be sometimes parts of your life, where you’re needing to focus more on that. And you’re needing to spend more time on that particular thing. And other things fall underneath that. And it’s always kind of shifting.”

On Setting Goals

“And so when it comes to goal setting for teachers, whether you’re a private teacher or whether you teach in a school building or whether you’re both, first of all, take a break during break, take some time for yourself to really unwind, to maybe take some time to journal if that’s your thing. Or for me, actually, I had a Google doc I opened today and I called it brain dump. I just literally [dumped] all the things in my mind I needed to put down.That’s the way I [do it], everybody’s different. And what you’re doing is you’re getting it outta your head and on paper. And when you do that, you’re able to really start looking at the things that are spinning in your head that are causing you overwhelm.”

“So during break, take a break, maybe just take a full break because what really will help spur you forward into the new year is really taking time to take care of yourself. And I don’t mean self-care in the way of bubble baths and pedicures. Those are amazing, but really taking care of yourself, finding the time to take a break and not think about school, then once it’s time to go back, the way to really move forward is to think about what has worked so far this school year. What have I really liked about what I’ve done? What do I need to maybe change a little bit moving forward and then just start slowly making steps towards that, you know? And because what’s worked in previous school years, in previous Januarys even, are not gonna work in this January because I’ve heard from several teachers, you know, like lesson plans that have always worked.”