Emily 0:36

Hey there. Thanks for joining us. Today we are discussing our best teacher approved tips for starting a good habit, and sharing some highlights from Episode 25.

Emily 0:47

Everyone wants good habits. What can you tell us about this, Heidi?

Heidi 0:51

Well, I wish I could take credit for this. I'm not that smart, but this is actually an idea from author Gretchen Rubin. She has a book we love called Better Than Before that is all about how to create and stick to good habits.

Emily 1:05

It's such a good book, it's full of strategies that you can use to help create habits that will benefit your life. And one of those strategies is called the clean slate. Why don't you explain that strategy, Heidi.

Heidi 1:17

The idea of the clean slate is that it's easier to make a change at a time when your regular routines are already up in the air. So think about moving to a new house, having a baby, going on vacation. All of those are times when our normal life is more or less reset and we are left with a clean slate.

Heidi 1:35

Because our regular habits are less structured during a change, making a change in our lives is much easier during clean slate times. It might seem trivial, but in one study, 36% of successful habit changes were associated with a change in circumstances. That's a pretty significant rate.

Kristen 1:56

As Gretchen writes, any beginning is a time of special power for habit creation, and at certain times, we experience a clean slate, in which circumstances change in a way that makes a fresh start possible if we're alert for the opportunity.

Heidi 2:11

And that's why we wanted to talk about the clean slate today, because as crazy stressful as back to school is, it does give us the tremendous gift of a yearly clean slate.

Emily 2:22

There are two keys to making the most of a clean slate. The first is recognizing that you have a clean slate that you can take advantage of, and the second is remembering that the temporary becomes permanent.

Heidi 2:34

Well, we can take care of that first key right now. Hey, teacher friends, just letting you know that you're in clean slate season. So harness this opportunity to make some changes. Done. Check Good job.

Emily 2:49

Any tips for remembering that the temporary becomes permanent?

Heidi 2:52

Of course. So make sure you start the way you want to continue. If you want the habit of going to the gym after school, make sure you go to the gym after the first day of school. What? Right? That seems terrible. Even if it means you walk inside and turn right around and walk out because you're so dang tired, you are still starting to create those neural pathways that form habits.

Emily 3:19

Okay, it's true, but you don't have to work out, guys, you can leave right after. Just show up. And this applies, really, to any habit you want to start. If you want the habit of meal prepping for the week, make sure you get started as you're starting school. Don't wait for a few weeks for life to calm down because, remember, the temporary becomes permanent.

Heidi 3:40

It's easy to see it happening from the outside, but it can be trickier to spot in our own lives. In the book, Gretchen tells about one of her lawyer friends who typically worked until nine o'clock at night. Yikes, she was hoping a job change would lead her to leaving work at 630 or seven instead. So her plan was to start leaving at that time, once she was feeling settled in her new job.

Emily 4:04

Hmm, I wonder how that worked out for her. Gonna guess that the likely outcome was not what she was hoping for there. A year later, she would still be leaving work at nine o'clock it turns out. To the lawyer, her reasoning made sense. But if you start something in the short term, whether that's something helpful or detrimental, it effortlessly becomes your long term routine.

Heidi 4:28

Yeah Gretchen told her decide what time you want your habit to be and walk out the door at that time, right from the beginning, it's not going to get easier to leave. You're not going to have less work to do after six months than you do on the first day.

Emily 4:42

That is really good advice for that lawyer and any of our teacher friends out there who are looking to leave work at a reasonable hour.

Heidi 4:49

As you are making your back to school plans, take a minute to consider if there's a new habit that you would like to start. As part of our readiness checklists, we have a page for your teacher life tasks. Add your new habit to your checklist so that you don't forget.

Heidi 5:05

You can find a link to the checklist in our show notes, and then, no matter how tired you are, make yourself start that habit the same time you're starting back to school, even if you can only partway do the habit.

Emily 5:18

If you don't want to start something new, at the very least, make sure your clean slate isn't wiping away the good you already do. If you have useful habits already, don't stop doing them, because the upheaval of back to school time. The temporary becomes permanent so even if you plan to just pause for a couple weeks, you might get a few months down the road and realize you forgot to hit restart, which has happened to me before.

Heidi 5:43

Back to school season is really a time of a lot of disorder, so do what you can to keep yourself ordered and keep listening. Today, we're revisiting episode 25 where we share teacher proof suggestions for thriving during a chaotic time.

Heidi 6:00

Well, besides our back to school nightmares, August is usually a month of having too much to do and not enough time to do it.

Emily 6:07

Oh so true. Teachers everywhere know that back to school is like running a marathon, but maybe it's actually a triathlon or an ultra marathon or something, because it just goes on and on and on and on forever and ever.

Emily 6:21

Because you've got all the planning beforehand, and then all the classroom setup, and then the prepping for lessons, and then there's the actual teaching of the children, children who come into your classroom not knowing anything about how to function in your space. It's like running a marathon and getting a basket of brand new puppies to train. So it's a lot.

Heidi 6:43

And I think that's why it's important to talk about how to manage the overwhelming stress that teachers can face at this time of year. There's a way to be productive without letting the to do list consume you. It comes down to living in your season, accepting and acknowledging that this season is hard. It sucks, but it won't always suck.

Emily 7:08

There are all kinds of seasons, right, not just the weather related ones. There are sports seasons, award seasons, seasons when all the TV shows are new, and seasons when they're all reruns. But for the purposes of our chat today, we're going to define a season with a capital S as a period of time when everything feels out of balance because one aspect of your life demands intense attention.

Heidi 7:34

One way to cope with a difficult season is to name it. Maybe it's a season of struggle, or a season of work. Author Gretchen Rubin, who we love, sometimes calls it a Season of Sacrifice.

Emily 7:48

Maybe for teachers, it's a season of focus on school and let everything else fall to the side until I can get my classroom up and running.

Heidi 7:57

It could be any of those things, or all of those things. Just going in with your eyes wide open and acknowledging that this will likely be a difficult period of time is the first step to not losing yourself in the tornado of crazy.

Emily 8:13

Tornado of crazy. That feels like an unfortunately accurate description of back to school life, but it's so important to remember that now isn't forever. This is just a season, and all seasons eventually change, even if it can be hard to remember in the middle of July that it will one day snow again.

Heidi 8:33

And you also have to trust that the sacrifices you're making this season will be worth it. We are giving up some of our normal life in pursuit of a greater good. On the other side of this, we'll be grateful for all of the work that we did to get through it.

Emily 8:48

But first we actually have to get through it.

Heidi 8:51

For me, at least one of the biggest challenges of managing back to school stress is the overwhelm. I start to think of everything that needs to be done between now and that first day deadline, and there are just too many things.

Heidi 9:05

I have found over the years that I am actually more overwhelmed by the thought of the things than by actually doing the things. So I need to efficiently transform my overactive thoughts into an action plan. And the first step is just to breathe, take some deep breaths and to calm the panic, and then it is time for a brain dump.

Emily 9:27

Oh man, what a terrible name for such a useful exercise.

Heidi 9:30

I know it really is a bad name, but it is a pretty accurate description. In a brain dump, I just dump out everything that's in my brain. You could do this in the Notes app or Google Doc or any other electronic form, but I actually prefer to brain dump with a paper and pen.

Heidi 9:46

Having a physical list feels productive. So already that's helping with some of the stress, plus writing on paper helps slow down your thoughts a little bit, and that can help add some more calm. But then once I've got my list of tasks, I can start categorizing them.

And for this, I like to switch back to a digital form, because I am a complicated woman. Almost anytime I make a list, I use Google Forms because having those neat little columns is really valuable to me. But hey, you do what works for you.

Plus, if you do use Google Forms or something digital. You don't have to worry about losing your paper, and you can access it from anywhere. So after you write your paper, put it somewhere digital for safekeeping.

Sometimes I will add my brain dump list to the left side column of my Google Forms, just so I have a master list of tasks. But you don't have to do that. The important thing is to make categories, and this is where I break down the monumental task of starting the school year into a few smaller chunks. Things like things to schedule, supplies to get labeling room setup, materials to prep, meet the teacher, first day plans, first week plans, all the fun stuff.

You might have similar categories, or yours might be completely different, but I think there is one category that we all need to start with, and that's the category called urgent. So if I know there's going to be a line for the workroom copiers in a couple of days, maybe my urgent task is to make all of my first day of school and meet the teacher copies right away.

Or maybe you need to schedule a bus for your May field trip before all the busses get booked and you don't get to visit the baby lambs at the farm.

That would be so sad. So I want to address the urgent first, and then I can start to categorize the rest. After my tasks are categorized. I look at them with a critical eye. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that just because something is on my list that it must get done. I need to remind myself of my most important goals at the start of the school year.

You know, it really is so easy to feel like everything is essential, but there's no way to do everything. The wave of the to do list will wash you away if you let it. So you have to find a way to create goals that have the biggest impact. Essentialize and prioritize.

What has to get done, what specifically about that goal needs to happen? Which goals have the greatest benefit for students, and what can wait until later? What can you ignore altogether?

We've talked on the podcast quite a bit about ATTABOY goals. ATTABOY stands for affirming, teaching, training and assessing at the beginning of the year, I think most anything you have planned for the first of the year will fit in one of those categories.

But if you have an item on your to do list that doesn't fit one of those categories and isn't something the school mandated that you must do, it's worth asking yourself if this task is actually vital to your back to school success. For me, my most important goal is affirming. I want my classroom to feel welcoming and safe. I want my new students to feel recognized and that each one of them is a vital part of our classroom community.

I am the same. I always tried to start with affirming, and because that was most important to me, I prioritized the tasks that made that happen. I made sure the kids names were on the door so they knew where they belonged. I labeled their desks and cubbies and coat hooks so they knew they had a place in our room. I planned for ways for them to introduce themselves and a way for them to get to know me a little better.

One thing I made sure to do was send home a letter before school. By contacting my kids before school started, I let them know that they matter to their teacher and got them excited about the things we will do together. I also use the letter to tell them to bring three Show and Tell items to introduce themselves to the class.

Now, if you are just looking at your tasks and looking for some to take off the to do list, sending a letter might be one that you would think you should cut because it doesn't seem absolutely necessary for your first day success. But if you're clear that affirming is your top priority, this task suddenly becomes much more important.

That's why having clear goals at a stressful time is so vital. How can you know what's worth your time if you don't know what will really matter?

Exactly. Take one of the other ATTABOY goals for example. Training is also important to me, but I first made sure to run my training tasks through the filter of affirming. Which procedures are most important to helping my students feel safe and independent?

Bathroom procedures is the answer to that question, because tasks like how to get a pencil are important, but they're not as vital to students feeling affirmed as knowing how to get to the bathroom is. So I move pencils further down my to do list.

But as important as goals are, we have to accept that we really can't do everything. We're holding ourselves to the standard of grace, not perfection. If we have set clear goals and then ranked our tasks in order of priority, it's clear to see what we can let go of.

It's so easy to think that because we want to do something, we have to do it. Maybe you want to do personalized water bottles for each student, but now it's three days before school starts. Is it worth staying up until 2am cutting out vinyl lettering? If your goal is that absolutely everything in your classroom is labeled from the very first minute of school, then go ahead, if that's what your goal is.

But I hope that's not your goal. No, that's probably not the most impactful goal. But if your goal is that kids feel welcomed and included, a personalized water bottle could contribute to that feeling, but it won't create it. So that time applying vinyl could be better spent preparing for your meet the teacher night, or better yet, you're not doing anything at 2am except sleep, because it's hard to be present and nurturing if you're exhausted.

And you gotta take care of you, it's okay if the kids won't get their personalized water bottles for a couple weeks, or maybe you'll just write on them with Sharpies, and that will be okay too.

Or maybe you just let the kids bring their own water bottles from home, and whatever happens is what happens. We're giving ourselves grace to let things go.

Yes, offering ourselves grace means we're okay doing what we can right now, even if it doesn't match what we wish we could do. It also means accepting that we might need to let everything else in our lives slide in this particular season. Some things have to give and we have to give ourselves a break.

If you need to write yourself a permission slip to let something go. We've talked about this in previous episodes, and it's an idea that's been really freeing to me when I get hung up, feeling like I can't let go of something, and it's just dragging me down, and it feels like no this, this one task I have to do it. I can't let it go. But then sometimes, if I can just stop, give myself a permission slip to let it go for now, let it go for this year, or maybe let it go forever, sometimes that's just the push I need to be able to move on.

And while we're talking about this, can I just point out that there really is no such thing as work life balance, at least not in the sense of, like an orderly scale where you always have as much work as you have personal time.

The balance is that at some times of the year, like back to school, work is going to be taking up a far greater share of your time and energy, and the other times of the year, the balance will shift, and other parts of your life will be taking a greater share of your time and energy.

Yes, work life balance is a constantly moving pendulum, so the key is just to acknowledge that and then give yourself grace, let go of whatever you need to let go of right now. Take a pause on things that you may prioritize at other times but can't fit in this season. It doesn't mean you won't feel frustrated or stressed or resentful. You probably will. We can acknowledge those hard feelings without letting them call the shots.

Something I find really helpful is to plan ahead for life preservers to help during a stressful time. That might mean delegating responsibilities in my life to other people who can help with them for a season. It can also be leaning into convenience for a while.

Maybe we're just gonna eat off paper plates for a month. Maybe there'll be more takeout food than you'd like. Communicating in advance, any help that you might need or any changes you plan to make will help you get through the difficult parts of this season.

Communication is key, and it will help you and the people in your life if you set a planned date for how long you think this season is likely to last for you. So maybe that's October 1, maybe it's the first six weeks of school. Having a deadline in mind will help you when you're drowning, to remember that this really is just a season, and seasons always end.

It may not all magically become stress free on your deadline, but likely you'll be able to start transitioning into the next season at that time. When you're in the thick of it, it feels like it will always be this hard and it will never get better. But remind yourself that you've done this before, and that it does improve and things get easier and it becomes less all consuming, and we all have a much calmer October to look forward to.

It's also important to not get so caught up in surviving that we don't have the space to appreciate the good things that are happening even in the middle of all this stress.

Yeah, I remember our mom saying once that she never got a Christmas she was so busy in making Christmas happen that. That you didn't get to actually experience any of it.

Yeah, it's so easy to get caught in that trap of the to do list that we forget to enjoy the magic of a fresh start. That miracle of a classroom more organized than it will be at any point in the next nine months, and the wonder of first meeting the little humans that you'll be teaching and learning from for the next year. The beauty of taking a room of strangers and shaping them into a caring community, that's the stuff that makes teaching a joy, and we don't want to miss it.

Enjoying those moments is why we're doing all the rest of the work. So make sure you are getting the chance to enjoy them by setting clear goals and offering ourselves grace, we make it possible to actually experience our first days of school. And we hope that this chat has helped you feel more prepared to live gracefully in your season at this busy back to school time.

That's it for today's episode. Use the strategy of the clean slate to start or maintain your good habits.

And remember to give yourself the space to live in your season at this crazy time of year.