Jenny Laqua

The Eisenhower Matrix was supposed to help me organize my tasks. What it actually did was illuminate something I’d been sensing but hadn’t quite named: the gap between the teacher I am and the teacher I’m becoming.

As I sorted my work into urgent versus important, a familiar pattern emerged. The things I most wanted to achieve – customizing lessons for my students’ needs, creating engaging and student-led experiences – kept getting nudged aside by daily demands. Student conflicts, marking deadlines, and interruptions would pull my attention, and my intentional planning would slip to tomorrow’s to-do list, again and again.

But here’s what the exercise revealed: I believe deeply that customizing lessons would help students be more engaged, more confident, and would ease the behavior challenges I’m seeing in my classroom. When I look out at my students, especially at the end of the day, I notice the signs of disengagement. I see restlessness during math independent practice and “think-pair-shares” that drift off-topic. And I know in my educator’s heart that engaging material is one of the keys to effective classroom management.

The matrix helped me recognize a truth: as a new teacher, everything feels important. But not everything serves my deeper purpose.

What Matters Most

Coming into this career, the teacher I wanted to be was one who ensured all students felt heard, seen, and valued. I’ve been building this through relationships – a strength of mine – but I’m understanding now that another crucial piece is how and what the teaching and learning looks like.

I want teaching to feel authentic to me so my passion can shine through, and meaningful to my students so they feel less “taught-at” from a top-down perspective and more considered, more significant in their learning. When I imagine success, I see students being curious, asking questions, making connections, and solving problems with confidence. I see them leaning in rather than checking out.

For me, this feels like guiding the current of their learning with confident intention. For all of us, it would mean feeling stable, confident, and mutually significant in the learning process.

My Commitment

This year, my North Star is creating learning experiences where my authentic passion meets my students’ need to feel considered and significant – moving from “taught-at” to “learning-with.”

My first concrete step: carving out one hour every Sunday evening for protected planning time. This isn’t just prep time – it’s sacred space to look at the week ahead and think deeply about how my students will access content, how I might differentiate, and what opportunities exist for meaningful collaboration and reflection. It’s time to create those lesson hooks that spark curiosity rather than compliance.

I’m blocking this time in my calendar like an unmovable appointment with my future self. I’m exploring the possibility of a colleague joining virtually for mutual accountability and shared wisdom.

This matters because our school culture is relationship-based, and I’m learning that intentional curriculum design fits into that foundation. When my planning is purposeful, my classroom community feels less disjointed and more whole. The ripple effects of this one change could transform not just my teaching, but my students’ entire learning experience.

As a new teacher, I’m still learning what deserves my time and creative energy. But this I know: my students deserve a teacher whose passion shines through intentional design, and I deserve to feel the deep satisfaction of guiding learning with confident purpose.

The daily demands will still be there. But now I have a North Star to guide me back to what matters most.