On the morning of February 5, 2015, my oldest daughter, who was 5 at the time, was aggravated with my youngest daughter, then 15 months old. I know this because the single-line entry I noted for that day in my planner reads that at 8:13 a.m., my oldest asked if we could put her little sister in the basement. On Monday, February 23, of that same year, my toddler referred to Canadian geese as “barking birds.” January 20, 2016, holds the memory of my 6-year-old requesting I turn on the movie Home Alone by asking to watch “lonely Kevin.”
My daughters are so much older now, though no less quotable. How do I remember these small, normally forgettable details so strikingly? It’s all thanks to a writing practice I began over 10 years ago. I call it the daily record, and it’s one of my biggest parenting and classroom hacks.
What’s a daily record?
The daily record is a habit I began when my children were very young. At that time, the days often felt like they blended together. I began to realize how quickly time was passing. Consequently, I thought about how so many small details would be easily lost in the busyness of day-to-day life. So I committed to writing down just one thing that happened with my daughters each day that was worthy of remembering.
These were not the milestone moments documented in excessive detail in the baby book. These were the tiny, ephemeral moments that made up the days spent with my children. They aren’t flashy memories, or even especially important ones. But reading them 10 years later, they bring back with sharp clarity the truest picture of what life looked like then. These seemingly inconsequential, easily forgettable moments document the very real process of growing that we were doing even on the most mundane of days.
The daily record for August 4, 2015, simply reads “Bought the girls a cupcake at Whole Foods and we sat and ate it after checkout.” Was it a challenging day, and I rewarded us with a cupcake to ease the strife? Or was it a boring day, and eating a cupcake was the most interesting thing we did? Most likely, it was an average day, just like any other day.
It’s easy to remember the highs of our outstandingly good days; the emotional lows on the worst of our bad days will never quite leave our memory. It’s all the “in-between” days that so easily slip away with time. August 4, 2015, was likely one of a thousand such “in-between” days. But on that day, we ate a cupcake together, and I know we did because I put it in the daily record for future me to remember.
Daily record in the classroom
The daily record became such an integral part of my motherhood that it naturally translated to the other major hemisphere of my life: teaching. As any teacher can attest, although the schedule and rhythm of a school year is predictably similar year after year, no two days in the classroom are ever quite the same. Each year brings a new group of students who share themselves with us for a brief time before they move on.
Life with children, whether at home or in the classroom, is filled with humor, sweetness, and unexpected wisdom; pure pockets of childhood brilliance that flash for just a moment in the midst of the chaos. It was those funny conversations and class jokes, the notes and drawings and silly antics that revealed my students’ personalities that I wanted to capture when I began keeping the school version of my daily record.
The original daily record began in my paper planners and agendas. Each evening, I’d write a couple of quick lines as I reflected on the day. Over time, the daily record has evolved. Then, when Instagram introduced Story Highlights in 2018, I found my preferred way to keep the daily record for each school year. A row of saved highlights lives on my profile even now—two highlights for each school year since 2018, each filled with the same kind of commonplace yet meaningful events that I documented in the daily record of my own children.
Though all the stories are anonymized for student privacy, even now when I revisit these highlights, I can vividly recall each student, each interaction, each conversation.
We teach so many students over our careers, but a daily record helps keep more of them in my memory.
Here are my saved highlights of the daily record from past school years:
Of September 22, 2022, I recall not a thing. Except that on that morning, Bosco Sticks were served in the cafeteria and a former student brought me one because he’d remembered I like them. I have the daily record to thank for this.
March 10, 2021, was a beautiful, warm spring day. I know this because that was the day a student turned on his camera to show us his cat exploring the front yard. I saved a screenshot of the Google Meet to my daily record.
Without the daily record, I’m certain that all I’d recall of the year of distance learning would be the shock of the initial school closures and the confusion, depletion, and exhaustion that defined the 2020-2021 school year. But the daily record assures me that there was more; it wasn’t all stress and strain. There was also the day we watched our classmate’s cat walk in the sun. How lucky to have been there for it; how fortunate to have documented that it happened.
A student’s cat making a Google Meet appearance and an attempt at a bribe—bright spots in otherwise normal days of teaching.
At the end of every school year, students receive a beautifully packaged and lovingly crafted yearbook that documents the achievements and milestones of the school year. These books bear proof of the kids’ academic and athletic successes; the dances, the awards, the performances, the senior portraits and superlatives. And like so many parents, I kept baby books for each of my daughters that document their first haircut, their first steps, their weight at every doctor’s appointment in their infancy—all the milestones that chart their growth. Both are true depictions of the lives of children—the most notable and special parts, that is.
But the daily record contains none of this information, none of these big events. It contains all the immutable parts of life that occurred in the spaces between those events. The “in-between” days when nothing much happened except all the moments of regular life that occur on any given day. These are the moments with my students and my own children that I wanted to remember and document most of all.
For example, here’s one of many Remind messages my students sent for months after they discovered I dislike waffle fries:
Tips for starting your own daily record
As the beginning of a new school year approaches, I suggest starting a daily record of your own—whether for home, for school, or both. Consider the following options for your own daily record.
If you prefer a physical document, a daily planner, agenda, or line-a-day journal all work well.
Look for planners that include a monthly calendar as well as a weekly spread. These have room for a short entry each day.
This classic option from Blue Sky has the perfect layout, with a monthly spread for schedule-keeping and weekly spreads for maintaining the daily record. If you prefer a hardcover, this wirebound planner comes in multiple colors. Is a bound spine more your style? The spreads in this bound version will work well for maintaining a daily record.
Another option is a line-a-day journal. This is great for parents who want to keep a daily record for a child over a period of years, but it’s also a great option for secondary teachers. Instead of using the sections on each page for different years (there’s usually five), just use one section for each class.
If a digital record is easier to keep, post to your Instagram Stories.
Saving them in a highlight for each school year has been my method for years. The ability to create and post a story quickly without carrying around a planner makes this format easiest for me to use at school. Although I don’t share the school version of my daily record with students, having easy access to view my highlights anytime has allowed me to remember and share stories in class of amusing anecdotes from past school years that I might otherwise have forgotten.
Interested in the idea of a digital record but not a fan of Instagram?
A running Google Doc for each school year to which you add the entries for a daily record would work just fine.
Consistency and brevity are the key to maintaining a daily practice that isn’t overwhelming or time-consuming.
Don’t feel as though you have to sit down and write a complete journal entry or go into great detail about the day’s events. The daily record entries are short and simple—quick remarks about a snapshot in time. This makes it an easy addition to even the busy schedules of teachers and parents, and one that pays dividends for years to come. When I pulled out my oldest daily records to revisit, my daughters (now 15 and 11) read through the entries with me, laughing and asking questions about what I’d written about them.
Some final thoughts
No matter which method you choose to store your daily record, the simple practice of keeping it will train your mind to notice more of those moments that would otherwise slip by. Slowly your perspective will shift to focus on what was good about even the most challenging of days. (Some days I had to try very, very hard to find even one good thing to write down. But the determination that there would always be at least one thing worth noting each day created the capacity for me to always find at least that one thing.) You’ll become a more present and mindful parent and teacher—and future you will thank present you for the time you took to focus on and document all the life that took place while you were busy living.
