Heidi: This is episode 259 of Teacher Approved.
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 talking about a strategy that can make your
whole life easier, seriously, and sharing a tip for surviving
your end of year events.
Heidi: Let's start with a try it tomorrow, where we share a quick
win that you can try in your classroom right away. Emily,
what is our suggestion for this week?
Emily: Okay, this week, before the year ends, say thank you to
someone who helped make this year a little easier. Think
about everyone who helped you pull this year off. Maybe it's
your teammate who covers your class when you need to run to
the bathroom, or the cafeteria worker who somehow still smiles
while serving her 300th meal of the day, and maybe she saves you
the good salads or whatever.
Heidi: Yeah, yeah, the emotional job of being a lunch worker is
wild, and probably nobody ever thinks her. You know, the kids
aren't. But this doesn't even have to be someone from school.
It could be the parent who had your back during a hard moment
instead of making it worse.
Emily: Uh huh. So whoever it is, find a way to share your
gratitude. Just send a text, a note, or take a moment to talk
as you pass each other in the workroom.
Heidi: And we would like to thank all of you who have left
us lovely ratings and reviews. They help us out so much, and we
read every single one.
Emily: It's true we do, and they make it a little bit easier for
us to keep doing our podcast. So thank you.
Heidi: All right, everyone, let's start with a story time.
So I had a year with a ton of mid year student turnover. Now,
my school always had high turnover rates, but that year,
it was like a third of the kids that I had at the end of the
year did not start the year in my class.
Emily: Oh my gosh. That is so hard. It's rough getting so many
new kids in the middle of the year, and every new kid that
comes in means a whole long to do list that you have to do when
you already have a long to do list.
Heidi: Yeah, oh, the pit your stomach when you get that
dreaded email. It means, you know, stopping everything, and I
had to go and figure out what they needed. So find a folder,
find a name tag, make a desk label, grab the parent info,
figure out where their cubby was gonna go. Oh, and then, of
course, you have to prep the class that this is gonna happen.
Be cool, guys.
Emily: Don't make us look bad.
Heidi: Because nobody had ever talked to me about how to
efficiently onboard a new student, every single time it
was like starting from scratch.
Emily: Yeah. And when something is so far outside your regular
routine, it feels like just a one off task, but it can start
happening like once a month.
Heidi: Yes. So you know, here I am getting ready for the third
new student of the term, and the light bulb finally turned on.
I'm not a quick learner. I was like, This is so dumb. I'm doing
the same thing over and over and over and forgetting steps every
time. So I sat down and I made a bunch of new student bags with
all of their supplies, including, I was very proud of
remembering this, the little popsicle stick that you put in
your name picker jar. And then, plus, I finally made a checklist
so all of my steps were in one place.
Emily: And I'm really lucky that you figured all this out,
because by the time I started teaching, you told me that I
needed to do this and that it should be part of my back to
school prep to make these new student packs. And oh, it was so
easy to just gather everything while I'm already setting
everything up at the beginning of the year.
Heidi: But what was even easier was the time that one of my
students switched schools and landed in your class. So because
we were doing the same things, I could just hand you all his
stuff, all ready to go.
Emily: That did work out that year, although I'm not gonna
lie, I was pretty much ready to send him back after a few days.
Heidi: He was a rough one. I can't say I was too sad to say
goodbye there.
Emily: Yeah, I'm still salty about that. But today's episode
isn't about preparing for a new student. We're just going to
apply that principle to other parts of your school day. This
is an idea from our favorite Kendra Adachi at the Lazy Genius
podcast. We love her stuff, and if you like us, you'll probably
like her too.
Heidi: Yes, but remember, the rule is that you are not allowed
to like her more than us. Okay? Everybody got that?
Emily: Yes, absolutely, you, if you're listening to us, you
implicitly signed on the line that you wouldn't do that.
Heidi: Loyalty contract.
Emily: Yep. Okay, so Kendra calls this concept Decide Once.
The idea is that there are a million tiny decisions in your
life that don't actually need to be made over and over. They just
need some thoughtfulness about what the best action is, and
that's your decision. Then the next time the situation pops up,
you just move forward, because you already know what to do.
Heidi: This is an especially useful strategy for teachers,
because there are so many decisions. The whole day is
nothing but decisions. If you are in the middle of teaching a
math lesson, you have to decide if the pacing is appropriate. Do
you need to slow down because the kids are confused or speed
up because they're bored? Do you need to redirect the kid looking
out the window, or is he just processing? How do you respond
to this student's answer to encourage richer thinking, what
modifications does the assignment need?
Emily: Yeah, and that's just in 30 seconds. If you expand that
out across the day, your life is just one decision after another,
and even if it's invisible, making a decision is literally
work.
Heidi: Yeah, the average teacher makes something like 1500
decisions a day, and every single one of them costs you a
little bit of energy. That's why it's called decision fatigue.
Emily: And we did a deep dive on this back in episode 79 so if
you want to go check that one out, but the short version is
that by this point of the school year, your decision making
battery is at 1%.
Heidi: And while there may not be a ton that you can do right
now to charge that battery, there's a lot you can do to make
sure that it doesn't get drained as much next year. You may not
know everything that's going to happen in your classroom in the
next year, but there is so much that you can predict. You will
face student behavior challenges and overflowing inbox and sub
plans, those are guaranteed.
Emily: Yep, and deciding once how to handle just those three
situations would make your day so much easier to navigate. But
there are so many more potential decide once opportunities. So
let's look at five categories of decisions and help you identify
where you could be making fewer decisions.
Heidi: And in case you're wondering, no, we have not
forgotten that this is the end of the school year. We know you
are tired, but this moment offers a chance for change that
is going to be hard to come by later, and it's because you are
tired that it works so well.
Emily: Being fed up is your signal that something needs to
change. Once you have a few weeks of summer break behind
you, that vision will be less clear. You'll forget how
frustrating managing your homework folders was until
you're two weeks into September and fighting the same battle. So
use your annoyance to make next year less annoying.
Heidi: And that is the whole framework of this episode. What
made you crazy this year? If something happened more than
three times, that is a problem with your system, and system
problems can usually be solved at one time.
Emily: Okay, so our first category is the big one. Decide
your default response to predictable problems. So we're
talking about the behavior stuff. What do you say when a
student blurts out? How do you resolve arguments at recess? How
do you redirect kids who are talking during work time? This
isn't the stuff that shows up on your pacing guide, but it's what
you spend 75% of your day managing. I made up that figure,
but it feels accurate.
Heidi: 90% feels probably more like it. And if you aren't sure
where to start, ask yourself, what situations kept pulling me
into the same conversations over and over all year long? Maybe it
was the bathroom. Some teachers spend the whole year being
asked, Can I go to the bathroom? Can I go to the bathroom? Can I
go to the bathroom? And answering that one kid at a
time, and that drains you.
Emily: And the answer is, not deal with bathroom requests
better. The answer is, decide once, what is your bathroom
system? Is it a sign out? Is it a hand signal? Is it two passes
a day? Pick one and use it until it stops working, and hopefully
it never does.
Heidi: And that's the same with blurting. You can decide right
now, what is my go to response when a kid blurts out? Maybe
it's a hand signal. Maybe it's an acknowledgement and a
reminder. I can tell you have something to say, and I'm going
to come to you in two minutes.
Emily: The point is you don't have to decide what to do on the
spot, because not only is that exhausting, but it also means
your response is inconsistent, which kids pick up on so fast.
My kids pick up on that at my house, those inconsistent
systems get tested constantly.
Heidi: Yeah, kids are crafty. They're always playing the odds
that if they keep pushing, this will be the moment you cave, but
if you respond the same way every time, they learn that what
you say is what you mean, and they will stop testing you so
often.
Emily: To solidify your decide once decisions. Write a script
for what to say. Maybe your decide once is that when a
student is staring off into space during work time your
prompt is, It looks like you need some help getting started.
The first step is to blank. So put it on a card or a sticky
note and keep it somewhere handy until it becomes an automatic
response that you don't even need to reference.
Heidi: Most of the discipline problems you face fall into
predictable categories. The extra talking, daydreaming,
blurting out, interruptions, and because they're predictable, all
it takes is one decision to guide your response every time
they happen.
Emily: Okay, the second category of decisions involves your
boundaries around work. This is email, grading, availability,
all of the emotional labor stuff. And the question to ask
yourself for this one is, where did I feel resentful this year?
Heidi: Resentment is a big clue that you're letting other
people's priorities dictate how you spend your time.
Emily: I love the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown,
and he has a quote that stuck with me, if you don't prioritize
your life, someone else will. Teaching may be the only
profession where everyone from central office administrators to
random people online feels entitled to tell you how to
spend every minute of your day. Even though most of those people
have no clue about the realities of running a classroom, they
still have opinions, and they're not shy about sharing them. So
if you let outside expectations determine your priorities,
you're going to spend every day bouncing around like a ping pong
ball in a blender.
Heidi: That's visceral. And that's why deciding once can be
so useful here. If you don't determine what's reasonable for
you, other people will. Take email, for example. I just saw a
teacher on threads yesterday. She got an email from a parent
at 9pm asking what the teacher was doing to help find a lost
water bottle. That's not a situation that needs to be
handled at 9pm.
Emily: Oh my gosh. Of course, if you wait to respond, you end up
spending the whole morning before kids arrive answering
everyone else's urgent questions instead of managing your own
tasks. So what are your email rules? Maybe you decide on a two
stage email boundary where you scan the inbox for essential
information before school and only reply to what's truly
urgent, and then use 15 minutes after dismissal to reply to
everything else. That way you prevent email from consuming
your prep time.
Heidi: And you can apply the same philosophy to grading. If
you don't decide for yourself, then every single paper in your
inbox becomes its own decision. Do I grade this? Do I need to
write feedback? Do I spend my prep time on this, or do I take
the stack home with me and grade on the couch?
Emily: And grading is important, but it cannot be allowed to
consume the time and energy you need for actual teaching and
living your life. So decide what gets graded and at what level.
If the purpose of grading something is to determine if the
students understand it, what's the minimum you could look at to
make that decision? Maybe you only grade the even problems on
a math page.
Heidi: And are there things that you can just skip grading
altogether? When I taught, we corrected our morning work as a
class, because the discussion was actually part of the
learning, so I never bothered to grade the page.
Emily: Oh no, not ever. Do not grade morning work unless you're
required to grade every assignment. But even then, are
there some things that can be checked for completion only?
Heidi: Yeah, you can just decide once that you save your best
efforts for assignments that will inform your instruction.
Emily: Now, in a perfect world, every assignment would be viewed
as a formative assessment, but until the district hires a
secretary to handle your paperwork, you do have to be
selective.
Heidi: Yeah, unless they're going to offer you some better
support, you need strong boundaries to protect your
peace. Apply that to your work hours as well. What time do you
walk out of the building? What time do you stop responding to
messages? Are you on Class Dojo or, you know, whatever app on
the weekends? Because if you don't decide, you're going to be
answering those parent messages about water bottles at 9pm and
then resenting it.
Emily: And that trains people that they have unlimited access
to you, which means they'll keep expecting it. So decide when
you're off duty. Maybe it's, I do not respond to messages after
five, and I do not respond on weekends. Whatever your number
is, decide once and stick with it, and maybe make sure your
email is not on your phone.
Heidi: Yes, very wise. Okay. Number three is to decide your
flow of stuff.
Emily: Stuff. Piles. Unfinished tasks, ugh. The papers on the
counter that you've forgotten exist. And the question for this
one is, what kept piling up literally on your desk or in
your brain all year?
Heidi: I saw a quote once that has haunted me ever since,
clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade
decisions.
Emily: Oh my gosh, it's so true.
Heidi: As someone who struggles to make those decisions and
therefore deals with a lot of clutter, that just felt a little
too personal. So I promise that I'm not being judgmental when I
say that the stack of papers on your desk is not paper. It's the
decisions you've not made yet. Do I need to save this file,
grade this, send this home, or throw it away? Until you decide,
it stays like an open loop in your brain.
Emily: Oh, it's so hard. I feel like I hit my decision fatigue
early. So I feel like I I'm burned out on decisions very
early in the day. And so there's always so many, so many
decisions piling up around my house. Okay, but one of the
easiest wins then in this whole episode is to decide how you are
going to handle the papers that come in frequently. If you don't
have a specific turn in system for student work start there.
Heidi: But also consider how you handle unfinished work. Now, I
never did get a good system down for this, so it meant I had to
make a decision every single time it came up. Save yourself
that hassle. Decide, do you have a basket for all unfinished
work? Maybe your kids have a folder in their desks.
Emily: And then also decide when it comes back out, because part
of the problem is having a system for stuff going in and no
system for stuff coming out, and then it just becomes a paper
graveyard.
Heidi: Yeah, so decide once unfinished work goes in this
folder. Every Friday we do a finish up Friday for 30 minutes,
or whatever the rhythm is, but the cycle is decided.
Emily: Yes. Another strategy that can help is deciding once
to adopt the One Minute Rule, which is something we picked up
from Gretchen Rubin.
Heidi: Yes, and we love Gretchen Rubin as much as we love Kendra.
Again, you will probably love her podcast if you have not
discovered her already. But remember the rule, you cannot
like her and her sister more than you like me and my sister.
Emily: Yes, correct. We have strict rules here, but the one
minute rule just says that if something takes less than a
minute, just do it now. Don't let a 30 second task haunt you
for weeks when you could have just done it and been done with
it. You will be amazed at what a difference just that tiny switch
makes. And I try to keep that going for myself at home. And
the other one is the one touch rule, where, if I'm holding the
mail, for example, I deal with it right then. I try to, okay, I
try to deal with it right then. I tell myself, one touch rule,
one touch rule, don't set it down, deal with it now. So those
can go hand in hand, one minute and one touch.
Heidi: It's just too much stuff all the time. Okay, our fourth
decide once category is to decide your repeatable routines
for the situations that come up over and over again. These are
your SOPs, your standard operating procedures. And the
reflection question here is, what situations left me
scrambling to remember what I did last time?
Emily: Like the new student bag situation that we were talking
about earlier. That is a perfect example. Getting a new student
isn't a hard situation, is just interruptive, because you have
to stop everything and switch gears so you can make a whole
bunch of decisions.
Heidi: Your new student protocol is a great place to add an SOP,
like we said, but consider your system for helping absent
students who come back and need to catch up. Maybe there's a
folder on the absent students desk, and you assign a buddy to
add any missing work to it, done. I
Emily: t's also helpful to decide your SOP for making sub
plans and events like picture day and field trips. These are
things you only do once or twice a year, but it takes real effort
to manage them if you start from scratch every time.
Heidi: You will be so happy to have these done. Once you see
how many decisions you're saving, you're going to wonder
how you ever manage without these.
Emily: Okay, our last decide once category is to decide how
you collaborate with other adults, and the question to ask
yourself is, where did working with other adults feel unclear
or frustrating this year?
Heidi: Honestly, the kid part of teaching is hard, but it's still
so much easier than dealing with other adults. It's the co-worker
drama that just tips me over the edge.
Emily: Oh yes, it's so hard. It shouldn't be this hard. We're
all grown ups. But the tricky part about using decide once
here is that you likely don't have complete control over every
situation, so it is important to be clear with what you can
control.
Heidi: A great place to start is deciding in advance things like,
what will I volunteer for and what will I not? Because if you
don't decide that ahead of time, you're going to get pressured
into saying yes to things that you will regret for the next six
months.
Emily: So decide once. I will run one committee, but not two,
or I'll bring food for the team breakfast, but I am not the
person organizing it, or I'll cover one duty trade per month,
and that's it.
Heidi: Yeah, because somehow you're the one that's always
willing to cover for someone else, but somehow they're never
available when you need their help. And then the other piece
is, how are you going to share resources? Or are you going to,
because unclear expectations are a recipe for hurt feelings.
Emily: So decide for yourself. Maybe you decide to share your
Google Slides, but not to share materials, because those cost
you a lot of money, or whatever your version is, but you decide
once, and then you don't have to litigate it every time someone
asks.
Heidi: So those are our five decide once categories. Number
one, decide your default responses to predictable
behavior problems. Number two, decide your work boundaries.
Number three, decide the flow of stuff. Number four, decide your
repeatable routines. And number five, decide how you collaborate
with other adults.
Emily: Okay, is your head spinning because we just threw a
lot at you? But let's simplify. Sometime in the next couple of
days before this year fades from your brain, open up a Notes app
on your phone or grab a piece of paper and make a list. The title
is, what drove me crazy this year, and then write down
everything that bugged you, drained you or made you cry, and
then mark anything that happened more than once. Anything you
marked is a good candidate for the decide once treatment.
Heidi: And you do not have to fix all of these. The point is
not to overhaul your whole life. The point is to take a few of
those recurring frustrations off your plate. And if you are a
Teacher Approved Club member, we've got a special bonus
printable for you. We've made you a blank what drove me crazy
this year list just for this exercise. So if you remember,
you can grab it now. You can print it and handwrite on it, or
type it right in the Google Doc, whatever works for your brain.
Emily: And if you are not in the club and you want to know more
about it, you can find that link in the show notes too. The club
is where we go deeper on all the stuff we talk about here on the
show, with bonus resources, monthly trainings and challenges
to help you get where you want to be.
Heidi: Decide once is such a useful strategy because it keeps
you in control of the moment. You don't have to drop
everything else you're managing to tend to this one problem,
because you already know how to manage it.
Emily: And that is such a helpful framework that we
applied it to the whole school year in our new book Structure
and Spark. So think about behavior. A lot of teachers hit
a wall in December when your usual system stopped working. It
doesn't mean that you failed. It just means that December asks
something different of you than September does.
Heidi: Right. And if you have already decided that when
December rolls around, you're going to layer in a short term
behavior, reward system, you aren't scrambling on December 12
when the wheels start coming off the bus, you already know what
you're reaching for.
Emily: And the same thing in January. Suddenly, the seating
arrangement that was just fine before does not work anymore.
You know this is coming. Kids need a mid year reset. So you
can decide right now that when you get back in January, you are
going to separate kids a little more than you did at the start
of the year. You could literally pick out the new arrangement
before you leave for summer.
Heidi: That is the power of decide once. It's not about the
paper or the email. This applies to the whole year. When you know
what each season is going to ask of you, you stop reacting and
you start managing proactively.
Emily: That is exactly why we wrote the book. Structure and
Spark maps every season, from back to school to the home
stretch, and it gives you the engagement tools and behavior
systems for each one. So instead of deciding every August and
every December and every January, you're just going to
decide once how to handle what you already know is coming.
Heidi: The book comes out August 18, and pre orders are open now,
and they really do help us out so much. The link is in the show
notes, and we've got some fun pre-order bonuses coming your
way over the next few months. We would love to have you with us
for this.
Emily: 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
buy ice cream sandwiches. Tell us about it, Heidi.
Heidi: I don't think there's ever a bad time to buy ice cream
sandwiches, but this can be such a lifesaver at the end of the
school year. If one of your upcoming celebrations involves
an ice cream bar, you know kids love an ice cream bar, do
yourself a favor and buy ice cream sandwiches instead of tubs
of ice cream. They're so much easier to manage. You don't have
to find room in the faculty room freezer for a giant tub of ice
cream, usually around everyone else's tub of ice cream. You
don't have to have a line of 25 kids waiting while you try to
scoop bowls, and they're getting impatient, and the ice cream is
rock hard because it just came out of the freezer.
Emily: I think you still have ice cream PTSD.
Heidi: I do.
Emily: But with this, you can still have the ice cream bar
fun. Just unwrap the sandwiches and put them in a bowl and then
let the kids smother them in sprinkles and chocolate sauce
and whipped cream and all the things. And now they have a
little ice cream sandwich sundae situation.
Heidi: And the kids will still think this is magical. So save
yourself the hassle, save yourself the shoulder pain from
scooping for 20 minutes straight, and grab a couple of
boxes of ice cream sandwiches.
To wrap up the show we are sharing what we're giving extra
credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?
Emily: I'm giving extra credit to murdoku. So maybe people have
seen the murdle activity books that are for like kids and
adults. There's different versions. It's a fun puzzle book
for solving a pretend murder, and not in a gruesome way. But
murdoku is a really unique twist on it, because it's a logic
puzzle. So you kind of have a grid you're working from that
has some things on the grid, like furniture, and then you're
given a set of clues. And those clues help you narrow down from
the list, like, who could possibly be the murderer. And
it's so fun, and I like that they're quick to do, like, I can
just decide to do one, and it will take me, like, five
minutes. So it's not a big time commitment, either. And it kind
of reminds me of playing clue.
Heidi: That's what it sounds like.
Emily: Yeah. So anyway, I highly recommend this book if you want
to do some more analog activities. This one's really
fun.
Heidi: I'll have to check that out. I can add it to my analog
bag.
Emily: Yes. Okay, what are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?
Heidi: Well, this is less fun, but my extra credit goes to fast
drying stone sink trays. I was tired of getting that dried up
puddle under the soap dispenser. You know, where it gets, like,
gritty, like, I hate that. And I thought there had to be a
solution.
Emily: There has to be a better way!
Heidi: I could do a commercial. And that's when I found these.
They're just little stone trays that you set your soap
dispensers on, and they absorb water crazy fast. And plus,
they're really affordable. I think I got a set of three for
$12. And I will have a cheap problem solver. We need more of
those in life.
Emily: Yeah. And the funny thing that I'm laughing about is that
I just recently got one too, but not, not exactly the same. The
one I got is like two long pieces that have, like a half
circle cut out at the end. So you put it around your your
faucet.
Heidi: Oh, oh, okay.
Emily: And so then it goes, like, because I have a problem
where my back splash, like the grout right along my counter,
and the backsplash is always like chipping, because water
gets up there. And so I just barely got those. But I also
have, I have a drying rack for dishes that's the same kind of
thing. And I have a bath mat in my bathroom, outside my shower
that's like this.
Heidi: I didn't even think of a bath mat.
Emily: Yeah, so and I thought I would hate it but I've had it
for years. It's not cold. You know, since it's a stone, it
seems like it would be cold on your feet, but it's not at all.
And I just like that it's not a mat that's getting moldy.
Heidi: Oh, well I'll have to check that out.
Emily: Yep, all of the diato, I think it's diatomaceous earth
stuff. It's all the rage now, and it's, and there's so many
affordable places selling it too where, when I first got my bath
mat, there was like, one high end company that was doing this,
and nobody else was, but now you can get them cheap anywhere.
Heidi: That's good. I'm gonna have to look for something. So
my sink doesn't have a backsplash, but the grout
between, like the sink and the counter, or the latex, what is
it, silicone, I'm always having trouble leaking there. I wonder
if I can get something like, goes over the edge. I'm gonna
have to investigate now.
Emily: Yeah.
Heidi: Got me on a quest.
Well, that is it for today's episode. Decide once while this
year is still fresh, and start next year off with a whole new
bag of tools.
Emily: And if you're a club member, if you want the
printable version of the what drove me crazy this year list,
head on over to your dashboard on the club and look for it
there.
Heidi: 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.