Emily: This is episode 270 of Teacher Approved.
Heidi: You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast
helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest.
I'm Heidi.
Emily: And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story
Window, where we give research-based and
teacher-approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and
more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources
from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.
Heidi: We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to
the show.
Emily: Hey there, thanks for joining us today. In today's
episode, we are helping you tame your back to school to-do list,
and we've got a teacher-approved tip for making the first week a
little easier.
Heidi: But first, let's start with a try it tomorrow, where we
share a quick win that you can try right away. Emily, what's
our suggestion this week?
Emily: This week, write down three things that you love about
your job, and then keep this where you will see it often. In
a few weeks, when you are in the thick of the craziest time of
year, having a reminder that teaching is more than just a
never-ending list of demands will help you get through it.
Heidi: Plus, taking a moment to be grateful is such an easy way
to tame anxiety. It reminds your brain to focus on the good
that's here, instead of spiraling about all the stress.
Emily: The podcast Happier in Hollywood, that I like, at the
end of their episodes, they always say it's a fun job and we
enjoy it. And they've explained that that is their mantra, that
they say to each other. They are Hollywood TV writers, so a
stressful job, and so when they're having a really tough
time, they say that to each other to remind themselves that
they picked this job, and they like this job. So, sometimes I
say that to myself.
Heidi: That is a very helpful reminder.
Emily: If you like this idea, or anything else we share here on
the podcast, we would love it if you took a second and gave us a
five star rating or review.
Back to school prep is so overwhelming. I mean, that is an
understatement, and the problem is not that you don't know what
to do, it's that your to-do list is longer than three CVS
receipts.
Heidi: That is a substantial number of tasks, all of them
shouting for attention, and getting those things done isn't
a question of planning or organizing, or even working
harder, it's about prioritization.
Emily: Yeah, when everything feels equally urgent, you just
start swinging, and it turns into whacking at your to-do list
like it's a pinata, and you just hope that if you hit it hard
enough, an organized first day of school will fall out.
Heidi: If only it worked like that, but instead you end up
putting in a lot of work, and it does feel rewarding to see so
many tasks crossed off your list, but you're still left with
this nagging feeling that you're not actually ready for school to
start.
Emily: So, today we're going to address that. We're giving you a
system for deciding what deserves your attention first,
so when you run out of time, you can be confident the most
essential planning is already in place.
Heidi: We are calling this the foundation first method, and to
explain it, I'm going to use a dumb joke that I took a
screenshot of in 2018 and still laugh at. They say it's a
mystery how the pyramids were built, but I reckon they just
started at the bottom and worked their way up. Let's face it,
going the other way looks a lot more difficult.
Emily: Ba dum ching! That is a very dumb joke.
Heidi: It is so dumb.
Emily: It's accurate, you know. It's like, how do you eat an
elephant? One bite at a time. Too often when we're faced with
a big project like starting the school year, we jump in at a
random spot without realizing that starting with the
foundation makes everything else fall into place.
Heidi: Oh yeah, we do this all the time. Imagine a typical
teacher's back to school to-do list. Hopefully you know, it's
typed in an app or neatly written on a sticky note.
Emily: Or you know, scribbled on the back of an envelope, because
that's all you had handy.
Heidi: Yeah, we've all got those envelope lists, and that list is
probably full of things like review dismissal procedures, buy
30 red folders, make name tags, organize math manipulatives,
decorate a bulletin board, and create a parent newsletter
template.
Emily: We are big fans of making lists, because getting tasks
written down is the first step to getting them done. However, a
list does have a big downside. When review dismissal procedures
is right next to buy folders, your brain thinks that both
these tasks have the same value, but dismissal and folders are
not equally important.
Heidi: No, one of them is about making sure everyone gets home
at the end of the day with all of their right stuff, and the
other one is a nice extra to have in a couple weeks when
you're finally ready to start teaching writing. So that's why
when we look at our to-do list, we need a way to know which
tasks belong in that pyramid foundational layer.
Emily: You could use any filter that is meaningful for you to
help you prioritize your tasks, but since we're doing all this
work for the kids, we can also use them as our guide. So every
single back to school task is helping your students meet one
of four needs: safety, belonging, competence, or
growth.
Heidi: Okay, we did borrow a bit from Azlo on that one, but it is
an efficient system. We're going to start our pyramid with
safety, that's the most basic need. We're going to start there
first. Once you're confident you've got safety handled, you
can move up to belonging, then competence, and then growth on
the very top.
Emily: And obviously growth is so important, but you can't get
students engaged in learning if their needs for safety aren't
being met. So, let's walk up the levels, starting at the
foundation. Think about the first day of school. What is the
minimum that has to be met for a successful day?
Heidi: And this is actually pretty easy, we just need to
make sure everyone is safe, fed where they're supposed to be,
and goes home knowing that their teacher cares about them. That
is our level one school day. It's safe and functional.
Honestly, anything more than that is just a bonus.
Emily: To pull this kind of day together, start with the
school-wide systems. Do you know the policies and procedures for
arrival and dismissal, and lunch, and emergency drills?
Heidi: Oh, and then you know, recess, and all the rest. And
then next, what classroom procedures do you need in place
to facilitate all of that? Think about what you want students to
do when they first arrive. What are they doing with their
backpacks and their lunch boxes?
Emily: And don't forget bathrooms. Making sure the kids
know how to get to the bathrooms when they need it is a huge part
of creating a feeling of safety.
Heidi: If you want some help with this step, we've got an
awesome resource for you. This is our procedures and routines
planning guides and checklists. Basically, it's all of our
overthinking, neatly organized for you. The planning guide
looks at 26 different parts of the school day and offers
guiding questions for each one to help you think through all of
the moving pieces that go into that procedure.
Emily: And then that resource has checklists. We came up with
more than 350 different procedures you might need in
your classroom.
Heidi: But please don't let that panic you. You do not need 350
procedures, but you probably need more than you think. For
dismissal, you might need a procedure for filling out a
daily agenda, tidying a desk, packing a backpack, and managing
pencils at the end of the day.
Emily: Or your pencil procedure might be one step: put your
pencil in your desk. It can be that easy, but whether it's one
step or 12, you need to have that figured out before you can
expect your students to know how to do it.
Heidi: And that's why this resource is so handy. We have
thought through all of the what ifs, so you can focus on the
what now, and we will put a link to that resource in the show
notes.
Emily: Once you've figured out your procedures, you next need
to plan for teaching them. If you've been with us for very
long, you know we take this part very seriously, and that's
because - and I cannot stress this enough - procedures make or
break your school year.
Heidi: Okay, so an image of Bonnie Hunt just popped into my
brain, and this is a very deep cut for all of you rom-com
girlies. This is even older than my 2018 screenshot joke, so I'm
gonna mangle a quote from Return to Me and say procedures are
your only link to reality. In the movie she says hairy legs,
which is objectively funnier, but I'm sticking with
procedures.
Emily: And then doesn't Minnie Driver say you should
needlepoint that on a pillow.
Heidi: Yeah. If we needlepointed, that is 100% the
sort of thing we'd put on a pillow. The procedures part, not
the hairy legs part, but what we're trying to say is
procedures are important, and how you teach them matters.
Emily: The thing about procedures is you have to
actually teach them if you want them to stick, and the method
that we love for this is tell, try, tally, talk. So you tell
and model it, students try it while you watch, you tally how
it went together, and you talk through what to fix next time.
Heidi: We have gone deep on this in episode 75, 150, and 154, and
probably in lots of other places, so we're not going to
reteach it all here, but another resource that can help you is
our Tell Try Tally Talk slides. We give you five blank slide
decks that you can duplicate and personalize. We try to make this
as easy as possible. All you have to do is add the steps you
want students to follow, and your lessons are ready to go.
Emily: And we linked those in the show notes as well. The
connection might not be obvious, but procedures about how to walk
in the hallway are an essential part of filling students' need
for safety. That's because of what's happening inside kids'
bodies when they walk into your room for the first time.
Heidi: Yeah, you know there are no tigers waiting to pounce on
them, and logically the kids know that too, but their nervous
systems encounter a new situation, and they immediately
start scanning for danger.
Emily: And a kid who's spending all their energy worrying about
how my teacher expects me to walk in the hall is not learning
anyone's name and is definitely not learning math. But when you
teach procedures clearly, you're basically handing students a
roadmap that guides every step, and that's lifting a weight of
anxiety off of them.
Heidi: So, that is the first level of back to school prep,
our safe and functional layer. When you're looking through that
giant to-do list, highlight anything related to creating a
sense of safety. Start with those tasks if you're not sure
where to begin your prep. That way, even if nothing else gets
done on your first day, you ensure that you have hit the
most important benchmark.
Emily: Obviously, part of creating a safe and functional
school day is teaching students how to respond to emergency
drills, but unless your school actually mandates teaching
drills on your first day, we recommend pushing it until later
in the week.
Heidi: Yeah, I really like to do it at the end of the first week,
and that's because, instead of creating a feeling of safety,
teaching emergency procedures often has the opposite effect.
Kids start imagining all the what ifs and the what should I
dos, and that ratchets up the anxiety they're already feeling
to an 11. But if you can wait a few days, the kids will be more
settled, they'll have more trust in you. So, the worries that an
emergency drill might stir up will not be so acute.
Emily: Okay, so once kids feel physically safe, it's time to
move up a layer to the next student need, which is
connectedness. And this is where we create a school day that is
warm and welcoming.
Heidi: So, this is like the shift from here's how we do
things, to I'm so glad you're here. Every kid should leave day
one believing that my teacher likes me, and my teacher is
excited to know me.
Emily: And this takes work, but it's worth aiming for, because
kids who feel they belong are more engaged in what's happening
in their classroom, and engaged students create fewer problems.
Heidi: And really, that's not an exaggeration. You can have the
best management system ever designed, and if the kids
haven't bought into it, it does not matter. You can't force
cooperation out of a kid, unfortunately, I guess. But a
kid who feels known and liked by you will put in effort to meet
your expectations.
Emily: And obviously, we're building these relationships
because we love the kids, but yes, you also get a management
boost out of it, and it's okay to like that bonus.
Heidi: Yeah, there's not a lot of bonuses in teaching, so we
should maximize the few we do get. A simple way to create a
feeling of belonging is making students' names visible in the
room. Even if you use numbers to label most things, aim to have
names in at least three places.
Emily: That might be the student's desk nameplate, or on
the job chart, or a birthday chart. But the one place you
really need a name is outside the door. This doesn't have to
be fancy, just even if you print out a class list and post it
outside the door, and you don't have to leave it up all year,
but at the start of the year, it's a way to say, Hey, you
belong here, you're in the right place.
Heidi: And in practical terms, that helps a lost kid know they
found the right room. My second-grade classroom was on
the opposite side of the building from the first-grade
rooms, so I often had students getting disoriented the first
few days, and a door display helped everyone find their way
back into the right room. In my early years of teaching, when I
was still young and had lots of energy, I went to the effort to
make a big display, something really, something with a wow
factor. I was trying to impress people, but after that, I kept
it simple. I bought cut out shapes and stuck a label on
them. It did the same thing, but took 20 minutes instead of two
hours.
Emily: But this goes back to focusing on the foundational
stuff first. If you had the time and energy, and all the other
pieces for the first day were in place, spending time on an
impressive door display would have been fine. But since I was
the one helping you prep, I know that you did not have the
foundational pieces in place.
Heidi: I did not, and bless you for helping me get on track so
many times. So everyone, learn from my mistakes. Go through
your to-do list and mark any tasks that help with community
building. You can put that as a B for belonging, that way you
know what to work on after you have safety covered.
Emily: And if you want some more support with creating a
classroom that fosters belonging, we have got several
episodes to help you out. Check out episodes 87, 148, 211, and
219 for lots more tips and tricks.
Heidi: And then, once you've got this connection layer in place,
let's move up to student independence. Where level one,
safe and functional, means a kid can get through the day, layer
three, calm and predictable, means a kid knows how to get
through the day.
Emily: And that sounds similar, but this is the difference
between your procedures requiring your direct
supervision to happen or mostly running on their own.
Heidi: You don't have time to coach kids through every minute
of the day, so you definitely need them independent as soon as
possible. So, think about the supports required to make this
happen. This might mean posting visuals for important routines,
assigning class jobs, or really streamlining tasks.
Emily: While this does help the teacher, it also helps the kids.
This layer addresses the need to feel competent. Think about
walking into a restaurant with some unfamiliar system, the ones
where you have to order in some weird way because they're trying
to be cool and trendy.
Heidi: Or you know, those places where your salad is served on a
slice of wood or in a fishbowl.
Emily: Why, why do they do that?
Heidi: I don't know.
Emily: They should just use regular dishes. If the food is
good, then that's what you want to remember. It shouldn't be
that the dishes were so remarkable.
Heidi: Yes, exactly. Because you're never going to call a
place like that your favorite restaurant. That's kind of what
it's like for kids on day one. The room could be wonderful, but
until they know how it works, they can't settle in and enjoy
it. So let's add to the to-do list the list of expectations
that need to be taught.
Emily: Procedures are for steps that need to be done the same
way every time, but expectations are for creating standards for
responsibility. You need a procedure for what students
should do if their pencil breaks, but you also need
expectations for how they should treat their pencils.
Heidi: Yeah. For some reason, kids need it spelled out that we
don't chew on pencils, we don't tear up the erasers, we don't
draw on things that aren't paper, we don't cram tiny pencil
nubs into the sharpener.
Emily: Kids just have a way to make things so hard.
Heidi: Why?
Emily: When we use tell try tally talk for procedures, we
like guided discovery for expectations. It gets kids
invested in using materials the right way, instead of you just
listing rules.
Heidi: So, we dug into guided discovery in episode 146 so we
won't do that today, but all the information is there if you want
it. And then, once kids finally feel safe, welcomed, and
capable, they are ready to learn, and that takes us to the
top of our pyramid, learning and thriving.
Emily: And the very good news is, there is no expectation that
you do much of anything for this layer on the first day. Your
first day does not have to include content. Kids will learn
so much more across the year if you spend the first few days
building the foundation that lets rich learning happen.
Heidi: But even if we're not diving into content on day one,
that doesn't mean we're ignoring it completely. Think about it
backwards. If you want kids successfully working at learning
centers in three weeks, what's the very first skill underneath
that? Maybe it's moving around the room quickly and quietly, or
maybe it's cooperating with a partner, or handling materials
without destroying them.
Emily: And you can apply that same idea to your lessons.
Instead of teaching place value right out of the gate, teach
them how to turn and talk, how to respond chorally, how to use
a whiteboard and marker without it becoming a whole thing.
Heidi: You are not behind when you do this. This is making sure
you have the independence layer solidly in place before you try
to build on top of it. It's how you make sure that the content
sticks on their little brains two weeks from now.
Emily: Another part of back to school learning is reviewing
content from the previous year, but even if it's technically
academic content, you can layer in the other goals at the same
time. So maybe on the second or third day of school you pair up
students to play a review game. That way you're establishing
expectations around partner work, and you're building a
sense of community and belonging, and you're also
reviewing content all at once. So three wins for the price of
one.
Heidi: Okay, we've just thrown like four months worth of work
at you in 20 minutes, and in case you've ever wondered why
the start of the year is exhausting, this is why.
Emily: Seriously, you have hundreds of essential tasks that
have to be done before the kids walk through the doors, but as
we mentioned, not all of those tasks contribute equally to the
success of the start of the year, so let's make sure we're
building the foundation first.
Heidi: Grab your to-do list and a blank sheet of paper, and then
you can fold the paper into fourths or draw lines, if you've
got a steadier hand than I do. Label the boxes for the four
back to school needs: safety, belonging, competence, and
growth. And then you can start filling in the page with tasks
from your list. And now you've got a pretty good idea of where
to start your prep work.
Emily: But of course this is just a tool, not a law. If
you're someone who cannot think about procedures until every
bulletin board is up, that's fine. You can start there.
Heidi: Or if planning your first read-aloud is the thing that
makes you excited to start the year, just go ahead and plan it,
but be clear, right, about needing to swing back to the
tasks that create safety before you get too far into things.
Emily: I just had a memory of, I think, just a few days before
school started for your very first year, me being up on a
chair trying to make that tree out of out of butcher paper, and
spoiler alert, it did not turn out well, but that was probably
not the most important thing that we could have been working
on.
Heidi: No, but we didn't know what else to do, because nobody
had prepped me, and you hadn't even started college yet.
Emily: I was in high school, I think I was a senior that year.
Heidi: We didn't know we were doing, paper trees were where we
understood.
Emily: Well, feeling ready for the first day starts with
knowing the right things are getting done, and that's the
goal. If you want help getting those foundational layers in
place before the first bell, that is exactly what we're doing
at Teacher Summer Talks this year.
Heidi: This is our free audio summit, July 20th through the
23rd. We've got more than 30 short sessions from teachers who
get it, and the nice thing is you can listen to all of that
while you're folding laundry or taking kids to the pool. You're
not gonna be chained to a screen all afternoon.
Emily: And this year, we're adding a challenge to our
summit, so you can join us every day during the summit for a live
call, and we will walk you through making your first day
plans, so at the end of the summit, you'll have your first
day all planned minute by minute. That's our specialty. So
grab your free ticket at secondstorywindow.net/summertalks
and come build your back to school plan with us. We would
love to have you there.
Now, for our teacher-approved tip of the week, where we share
an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and
simplify the rest. This week's teacher-approved tip is make a
list of the order to teach your procedures. Where do we start
with it, Heidi?
Heidi: Well, as we mentioned, you can't introduce all your
procedures at once and still have kids remember them, so that
means teaching them one at a time. To do that effectively,
you need to know the right order to go in. We always recommend
starting with the bathroom procedures very first, and then
second is your attention signal. After that, you need to think
about the flow of your day. What do students need to understand
before the next activity?
Emily: We call these hinge points because the success of
the activity hinges on whether or not students understand what
to do. Think about everything students need to be successful
at lunchtime, and then schedule time to teach that before lunch.
Even if you teach fifth grade, you can't just drop kids off in
the cafeteria without some discussion of what should be
happening.
Heidi: So, here's how I set up my first morning, and I'm
sharing this not because I think it's a perfect example, but
because I think the thought process might help you get your
wheels turning. So, for me, after I had run through my
bathroom procedures, and to be fully transparent, I did not do
a full tell, try, tally, talk on bathroom procedures at that
point. I just kind of explained the basics, we could get back to
that later. And then I would teach the attention signal.
By that point, my students had been in their desks for a while,
so I wanted to switch gears and move to a different spot before
I did my teacher introduction. So, how to move to the rug and
choose a seat was the hinge point for that activity. So, I
taught that next, and then we would transition to the carpet.
I would introduce myself and read a quick picture book. Then,
by that point it was getting close to recess, so it was time
to teach students how to line up, how to walk in the hall,
where to line up after recess. I would walk them back in. And I
did not let anyone take any equipment out for the first few
days, because I just couldn't add that in on top of everything
else in the first day.
Emily: Yeah, and you don't want them doing that before they know
the procedures for how to handle those materials.
Heidi: They were fine. Some of the boys grumbled, but it was
fine. We all lived to tell the tale.
Emily: So, a good rule of thumb for the first week is to teach a
procedure, and then do a different type of activity.
Then, teach the next procedure. By switching gears, you help
maintain the balance of structure and spark, which keeps
everyone engaged.
Heidi: But before you can bounce back and forth, you need to know
what you're coming back to. So, start by making a list of
everything students need to know how to do to function
independently in your room. This is where those procedure
checklists we mentioned can be extremely helpful. And then
circle the procedures that you absolutely have to teach on day
one.
Emily: You probably won't have time for too many on that first
day, so do another pass through the list and look for what you
can introduce on day two, then days three and four. If you have
our procedures checklist, you can use the handy dandy dropdown
menu to do this right on the page.
Heidi: And a bonus of doing this is that it makes your first week
so much easier to plan, you know what's essential, and then
you're ensuring that you have the time to fit it in.
All right. To wrap up the show, we're sharing what we're giving
extra credit to this week. Emily, look at your extra
credit?
Emily: I'm giving extra credit to the book, Our Perfect Storm,
by Carly Fortune. I have read several books from her. Every
Summer After, I think it was her first big new release that
everyone was excited about, and I've liked her books, but this
one I am loving. It is so good. I'm almost done with it, and I
think it is a perfect summer read.
Heidi: I've seen it on a lot of people's recommendations for the
summer. Is it like a rom-com or thriller?
Emily: It's a rom-com.
Heidi: Oh, okay. Well, I'll have to check that out.
Emily: Yeah, you should.
Heidi: A good summer read.
Emily: Yeah, what are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?
Heidi: This is less exciting, but it solved a niche problem,
and I'm probably not the only one who needs this, so I'm
giving extra credit to the suction cup dish brush holder I
got. So, okay, go back in time with me, like, I don't know, 15,
20 years, and there was this trend of putting like vinegar
and dawn in a scrub brush wand, one of those scrubby wands that
used for dishes to clean the shower with.
Emily: Yep, there's one in my shower.
Heidi: Yes, I was like, why did I stop doing that? It was just
so handy after you're done showering, you just like wipe it
down real quick. You don't even have to do it every day, but
then I had this scrub brush dish goopy thing in my shower, like
there's got to be a fix for this. And there were lots of
options, actually. So I bought one, it looks like a spring, a
metal spring with two suction cups on it, it just goes on the
wall, it's supposed to go on the side of your sink. I put it on
the wall of my shower with a little dish brush holder in
there, it's kind of up high, so it's out of the way. Easy peasy,
nothing is dripping, it's, it makes me happy every time I get
in the shower to have this problem solved, and my shower
has never been cleaner.
Emily: Well, there's just nothing more satisfying than
something that solves, perfectly solves a problem that's been
bugging you.
Heidi: So true. That's the kind of drug I need.
Emily: Yes.
Heidi: Give me that feeling, please.
Well, that is it for today's episode. Break down your to-do
list by the needs that each task is fulfilling, and then use that
list to prioritize your time and energy.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm Heidi.
Emily: And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow
or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an
episode.
Heidi: You can connect with us and other teachers in the
Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week.
Bye for now.
Emily: Bye.