Heidi: This is episode 199 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
Sindow, 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're talking about why boundaries are the secret
ingredient for summer fun and back to school readiness, and
sharing a teacher approved tip for making summer memory magic.
Heidi: But first, it is time for Try It Tomorrow, a favorite
quick win that you can try in your life right away. Tell us
about this week's try it tomorrow, Emily.
Emily: This week I want you to make a to don't list. It's so
simple. Just write down five things you're giving yourself
permission to skip this summer. Maybe it's checking your school
email daily. Maybe it's redoing your class decor from scratch
again.
Heidi: Put that list somewhere visible, like, you know, on the
fridge or in your planner, somewhere where you will see it
and think of it as your summer permission slip.
Emily: If you like this idea or anything else we share here on
the podcast, would you take a second and give us a five star
rating and review on Apple podcasts?
Heidi: Over the years, Emily and I have created an extensive
library of back to school products to help you find the
tools that will make the start of your new year easier. Today
we are spotlighting our pattern blocks activity set.
Emily: Now you're probably not ready to think about the first
day of school yet, but we have got some great tools to help you
check off one of your most important first day tasks with
basically no prep. So this one's not too painful to think about.
So on the very first morning, your students need something to
do when they arrive immediately when they walk in the door.
Heidi: And this can be so tricky to plan because you haven't
taught these students where to get the supplies, or your
expectations for managing supplies. On the first day, kids
are probably going to be arriving at different times.
They often come in really early. And of course, everyone's
anxiety is super high.
Emily: So for that first day activity, you need something
calming, open ended, and easy to engage with. Enter the pattern
blocks. You can print off some of our super cute school themed
pattern block mats. You put a couple on each desk along with
some blocks, and kids can stay happily engaged for 20 or even
30 minutes.
Heidi: We also have a similar set of activities that use
Legos. You get all the same benefits of using the pattern
blocks, but it really might be easier to round up a tub of
loose Legos than it is to get a class set of pattern blocks.
Emily: Plus you might feel like the older kids will have more
buy in to the activity when they see Legos instead of pattern
blocks, although, in our experience, even the older kids
love a pattern block. You can check out the show notes for
links to both of these products, and give yourself the relief of
knowing that your first activity of the first day is already
planned, prepped and ready to go.
Heidi: So here we are in June, which means that many of you are
either done with school or you can see the finish line so close
ahead. And if you're anything like we were during our teaching
years, you might have some conflicted feelings right about
now.
Emily: Oh yeah, there's this weird teacher thing that happens
in summer. You're exhausted and ready for a break, but you also
feel guilty about how excited you are to be done, and then
there's this pressure to immediately start being
productive.
Heidi: Oh yes. I remember sitting on my couch the first
week of summer break, still in my pajamas at noon or probably
three, let's be honest, and feeling just overwhelming guilt.
Like, shouldn't I be organizing my classroom library right now?
Or shouldn't I be planning next year's reading units?
Emily: Instead of watching Doctor Who marathons, right? Or
if it's not the heaviness of productivity, guilt weighing you
down, it's that niggling sense of panic that you can't quite
escape. It's like being circled by a school of sharks, or, are
sharks in schools? What do they call those?
Heidi: Pods, collections, gathering? Whatever sharks do,
there is a lot of them, and it feels like they are circling a
little bit closer every day. It takes a monumental amount of
work to get ready for the new school year, and as much as we
just want to relax in our summer, there's always the sense
that something is just off to the side waiting to pounce.
Emily: It makes me picture those little goblin guys from Disney's
Hercules. I think they're called pain and panic, but I think for
a teacher, they could easily be called guilt and panic.
Heidi: Oh definitely. Just picturing them right now, that's
perfect. And they are persistent and ruthless, and one of them
sounds like Bobcat Goldplate, and that is an extra bummer for
sure.
Emily: I'm impressed that you knew that guy's name. I know who
it is, but I did not know that was that guy's name.
Heidi: I did live through the 80s, so, you know.
Emily: So did I! Most of the 80s.
Heidi: Only half of them.
Emily: 60%.
Now this may be a controversial opinion, but we believe teachers
deserve to enjoy their summer without constant jabs from
cartoon imps.
Heidi: You can never say that we shy away from the hot takes
around here.
Emily: It's true. If it, if it needs to be said, we're gonna
say it. Teachers deserve a break. So we're going to give
you the secret weapon for taming teacher guilt and panic, and
that weapon is boundaries.
Heidi: Wah, wah. Very anticlimactic. Boundaries are
not the most thrilling content to be talking about, but they
are oh so summer saving. That's because teaching doesn't stop,
just because our contract does, and if we're not careful, summer
just becomes a quieter form of burnout.
Emily: But with the right boundaries, you can actually
recover and still feel ready by August. Boundaries are the
invisible fences that protect your peace, your time, and they
let you enjoy your life and still start the year feeling
prepared.
Heidi: Imagine how you might spend a typical summer. You're
on call for your family's every need. You end up planning three
vacations, organizing the pantry, attending 12 PD
webinars, overhauling your math centers, and when back to school
season rolls around, guess what? You feel anything but rested.
Emily: And that's where boundaries come in, not as
another thing to do, but really as a way to protect the season
that you're in.
Heidi: So today, we are walking you through three kinds of
boundaries that every teacher should consider this summer:
time, tech and task load. We love a list, especially if it
can start with the same letter. Now these aren't rigid rules.
We're offering you some flexible frameworks that you can adapt to
your own life and your own needs.
Emily: When you set clear boundaries around your time,
your technology use, and your task load, you create space for
the kind of recovery that actually prepares you to be the
teacher you want to be.
Heidi: Our teacher approved summer plan, I feel like we
should have like a little trademark, copyright or
something.
Emily: Tmtm.
Heidi: It has two parts, recovery and readiness. Last
week, in Episode 197 we talked all about the four different
types of recovery and suggested ways for how you might want to
include them in your summer plans.
Emily: Summer recovery is the best kind of recovery, so
definitely check out that episode if you missed it. But
the second part of our summer plan is readiness. We need
recovery to refuel after a draining school year, but we
need readiness so we don't find ourselves completely burned out
by September 15 from trying to get the new year up and running.
Heidi: The first step to our readiness plan is to imagine how
you want to feel as you head into the new school year. If you
want to start the school year feeling more prepared than ever,
what tasks do you need to accomplish to give you that
feeling?
Emily: Then the next step is to identify the specific goals that
will help you get there. You will probably have some school
related goals in there, like reading a couple teaching books,
or finally figuring out how to fit more social studies into
your day.
Heidi: And, of course, joining us for the Teacher Summer Talk
Summit and the Back to School Success Course, right?
Emily: Yes, you definitely want to grab your spots for those in
June. But also think about personal goals that can help you
get ready for school. Maybe you want to start going to the gym
every day now, so that it's already a habit when school
rolls around.
Heidi: Or maybe you want to spend some time this summer
trying out easy meal prep ideas so that meal times during the
school year are way less frantic.
Emily: If you want some help working through these readiness
goals, there's a page for this in, you guessed it, our free end
of your roadmap that we've been talking about nonstop. If you
don't have it yet, what are you doing? There's so much good
stuff in there, so go grab that from the link in the show notes
if you don't have it.
Heidi: Once you have an idea of what back to school readiness
looks like for you, it's time to put some boundaries around those
goals. I know our people pleasers and our perfectionists,
they don't love the idea of setting boundaries.
Emily: But you need to shove guilt and panic way back down
into the underworld by reframing your thinking. Boundaries aren't
secretly going to turn you selfish or mean or lazy. They're
about being strategic with your resources.
Heidi: time boundaries. This is about being intentional with
when you work on school stuff, and probably more importantly,
when you don't.
Emily: And I know what some of you are thinking. Emily, I have
so much to do. I can't just not work on school things.
Heidi: We are not suggesting that you don't work on school
things ever.
Emily: We would be the most hypocritical people ever if we
told you not to do school stuff during the summer, since that's
the main thing we usually used to do during the summer.
Heidi: Yep, every summer. But learn from our mistakes and be
strategic about when you work on school stuff and how much you're
going to do.
Emily: So instead of working too much, some teachers don't want
to think about it at all. And I know some of you are out there.
It's easy to assume summer means we have all the time in the
world, but unfortunately, the whole I'll just do school stuff
when I feel like it plan often means that we never feel like it
until that lovely, motivating sense of panic sets in.
Heidi: Now it might seem like working too much and not working
enough are opposite problems, but they really are two sides of
the same coin.
Emily: Yeah, it's like guilt and panic had a horrible baby, and
that baby is named anxiety.
Heidi: Babies do cause anxiety. Let's be honest. If we feel
anxious, we might cope by throwing ourselves into
unrealistic to do lists, or we might cope by ignoring that to
do list altogether. Either way, we end up stressed out and
really not feeling any more ready.
Emily: So let's not do that. Instead, try carving out
designated blocks of time for working on school tasks. Those
time blocks will look different for everyone, and they'll likely
change over the course of the summer.
Heidi: Yeah, you may decide that you're going to work on school
tasks for 30 minutes every morning, and then you can just
enjoy the rest of the day. Or you may decide that you're going
to work in your classroom every Wednesday. Even just one hour a
week for intentional prep can work wonders.
Emily: I love this approach because it gives you both
structure and freedom. You know you have dedicated work time so
you really can relax during your off time without that nagging
feeling that you should be doing something productive. You can
tell that feeling, hey, I have a plan. Back off.
Heidi: Another option for managing your time is the
monthly approach. Maybe in June you're not going to do any work.
Emily: Except, of course, to join us in the Teacher Summer
Talk Summit. But don't worry, that's going to be so fun, it
won't even feel like work.
Heidi: That does feel like the perfect thing for June. And then
in July, you might do light prep work, and then in August, you
can really dive into more focused preparation.
Emily: Whatever you decide, the key is making a decision and
sticking to it, because when you don't have boundaries, you end
up in this weird space where you're not really relaxing but
you're not really being productive either.
Heidi: Yeah, you're not getting the benefits of rest, and you're
not doing your best work. It's kind of the worst of both
worlds. But when you have clear time boundaries, you can be
fully present in whatever you happen to be doing.
Emily: So the second type of boundary is around technology,
and this one might be the hardest for some of us, many of
us, most of us.
Heidi: Oh, yeah, definitely. We are supposed to be connected all
the time, checking email, scrolling Instagram for
classroom inspiration, we're just feeding on it constantly.
Emily: One simple tech boundary is taking your school email off
your phone for the summer. You can still check it on a computer
or reinstall it briefly if you really need to, but this makes
sure you're not just opening it out of habit and accidentally
ruining your summer peace, and who hasn't been there.
Heidi: Or if that feels too scary, maybe try putting
boundaries around when you check it. Maybe you only check your
school email once a day, or, even better, once a week.
Emily: You could also try being more intentional about which
teacher related social media accounts you follow.
Heidi: Pay attention to how you feel after looking at certain
accounts. Hold on to those accounts that make you excited
to teach, and then just unsubscribe from the ones that
trigger your comparison brain.
Emily: Yes, because social media can be such a double edged sword
for anyone, but especially teachers, because it can be so
inspiring. And hopefully our account is super inspiring for
you, but it can also make you feel like everyone else has it
more together than you do. We don't want that.
Heidi: And while we're talking about social media, just a
warning to be careful about Pinterest during the summer
break. I know we all love Pinterest, but it can quickly
turn from inspiration to overwhelm.
Emily: If you're going to venture into Pinterest land, try
setting a timer. Give yourself 20 minutes to browse, save what
you love, and then close the app. Don't let yourself fall
into that Pinterest rabbit hole where suddenly it's 2am and
you've pinned 47 different bulletin board ideas.
Heidi: Yeah, nobody needs 47 bulletin board ideas. The goal
of tech boundaries isn't to completely disconnect from the
teaching world. It's to be intentional about how and when
you engage with it.
Emily: The internet is so full of quote unquote inspiration,
but also full of comparison traps and decision fatigue. So
don't let the tech bros steal your summer, because they are
designing their apps to be so dang addictive.
Heidi: Those dang tech bros.
Our third type of boundary is around task load. We want to be
strategic about what we take on and what we let go.
Emily: This one is huge, because teachers are natural
overachievers for the most part. We see all the things we could
do to improve our classrooms, and we want to do all the
things, all of them.
Heidi: All the things, all the time. But as we have learned the
hard way, time and again, trying to do everything usually means
you don't do anything particularly well. It's better
to focus on a few high impact tasks than to spread yourself
thin across dozens of small projects.
Emily: Time boundaries and technology boundaries work
really well with task boundaries. Once you schedule
your productive work time, you want to make sure that that time
really is productive, and that means having a clear vision for
what needs to be done during that time.
Heidi: If you're going to go to the trouble of hiring a
babysitter for two hours so that you can work in a coffee shop,
you don't want to waste 45 minutes of that time just
figuring out where to get started. Or what would be even
worse, spending 45 minutes in some kind of Tiktok rabbit hole.
Emily: Yes. So having a list of tasks is important, but knowing
where to start on that list is vital. Back in episode 131 we
talked about how to prioritize your summer to do list. Go
revisit that episode if you want to deep dive. But the first step
is to imagine how you want to feel as you head into the new
school year, and then identify specific goals you can set for
the summer that will help you get there.
Heidi: With that to do list in hand, ask yourself, which tasks
will help you move closer to feeling prepared, and then you
start there. Yes, printing vinyl cubby labels would be super
cute, but is that more useful than having your copies made for
meet the teacher night?
Emily: It's probably definitely not as impactful on your mental
load, for sure. We also recommend setting boundaries
around other people's expectations. Maybe your
principal sends an email in July suggesting everyone update their
bulletin boards. You can politely acknowledge it and add
it to your to do list for August, or decide it's not a
priority this year.
Heidi: Now, during the summer, you may also find that other
people in your life expect you to be at their beck and call
because you are on a break. Your neighbor might think that you
should be happy to watch her kids because now you have all
this time off, or your parents might expect you to come help
stain their deck, because, I mean, what else are you doing
all day?
Emily: When other people think you owe them their time, I've
found it often comes from a place of jealousy, even if they
aren't aware of it. They wish they had summers off too, while
completely ignoring that you still have professional
development and planning responsibilities and everything
else that comes with being a teacher. Oh, and you're not
getting paid for all of that either. Let's not forget that
part.
Heidi: So when this happens, try to assume that people who are
claiming your time aren't really aware that they're overstepping.
Let's be honest, that might not be true, but at least you'll
feel better if you don't jump to the worst conclusions.
Emily: And then just say no if you need to, or offer a limited
role. Maybe you can watch your neighbor's kid from nine to noon
one day a week, or you can help your parents with the deck one
afternoon. But you can't take on the whole project.
Heidi: But, you know, still say no. You can say no, and I know
it is so hard to do, but it does get better with practice, and
you are not unreasonable to decline an assignment that you
didn't ask for. The goal isn't to be rebellious or difficult.
The goal is to protect your energy for the things that truly
matter in your life.
Emily: So as you're making your summer plans, remember these
three kinds of boundaries. Time boundaries to help you be
strategic about when you work and when you rest. Technology
boundaries to create space from the constant input of teacher
demands. And task load boundaries to focus on what
truly matters instead of trying to do everything.
Heidi: When you have clear boundaries, you can be fully
present in whatever you're doing. When it's work time, you
can focus completely on the task at hand, and when it's rest
time, you can truly rest without guilt. We're saying no to
teacher guilt.
Emily: Again, you can count on us to stand up and say the
unpopular things. No to teacher guilt. Plus boundaries help
prevent the end of summer panic. When you have boundaries and
stick to them, you end up with a much more realistic sense of
what you can accomplish. No more over promising to yourself and
then feeling disappointed.
Heidi: If saying no is a struggle for you, like it is for
so many people, try thinking of everything you get to say yes to
because you're not taking on too much. You get to say yes to
enjoying your unpaid time off. You get to say yes to
reconnecting with loved ones. You get to say yes to
rediscovering the parts of your life that just kind of get
buried during the school year.
Emily: And most importantly, you get to say yes to showing up in
August well rested and excited about teaching, even if your
bulletin boards aren't Pinterest perfect. And whose are, really?
Heidi: Teacher well-being directly impacts student
outcomes. When you take care of yourself, you are taking care of
your students too. Your future students deserve a teacher who's
rested, excited and ready to give them their best, and
boundaries are what make that possible.
Emily: We would love to hear what you are saying no to this
summer. Come join the conversation in our teacher
approved Facebook group.
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
summer sensorium. Tell us about it, Heidi.
Heidi: So we talked about this back in episode 134, but since
it happens to be summer again, it seems like a good time to
revisit this topic. So I learned about this from Gretchen Rubin
on her podcast, Happier?
Emily: Yeah.
Heidi: Somehow that didn't seem right.
Your sensorium is your different sensory perception taken as a
whole. Our brain takes the different inputs from each of
our senses and then assembles them into what our perceived
experience of a moment is. So in this episode, we have talked a
lot about what to say no to, but it is also important to
prioritize the things that we want to say yes to.
Emily: And hopefully one of the things you want to say yes to is
really experiencing your summer break. Take a minute to think of
your favorite summer sights, sounds, touches, tastes and
smells, and then make a plan for how to include them in your
summer activities. This will help ensure that you're really
savoring the full scope of what this season has to offer. And I
feel like we're good at doing this at the holidays, if you're
someone who really loves Christmas, but I don't know that
it's ever occurred to me to do this in the summer, so it
probably hasn't occurred to a lot of you either.
Heidi: Yeah, and summer's, summer's great. We really need
to soak this in. Think how enriched and rejuvenated you'll
feel after a summer of sweet, drippy watermelon and those
chlorine scented kids and twinkling fireflies and living
room dance parties and walking barefoot in the grass.
Emily: Summer has some really great sensory opportunities, so
do what you can to soak them all up.
Heidi: To wrap up the show we are sharing what we're giving
extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra
credit?
Emily: Well, my extra credit is something that I think all of us
can appreciate and connect to, which is turning off almost all
of my many daily alarms for summer.
Heidi: Ah, the best feeling.
Emily: Giving so much extra credit to that. Having three
kids at three different schools has meant a lot of running
around to get everyone where they needed to be last year, and
it was just the best treat the other day to turn all of those
off, and I get to enjoy sleeping in pretty much every day, which
is my ultimate joy in life.
Heidi: I love that so much for you, that is such a treat.
Emily: Thank you. What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?
Heidi: Well, I'm giving extra credit to Resident Alien season
four, since it finally started. My favorite kind of TV show, if
you've been here for a while, you probably heard me talking
about this, but I love a TV show that is quirky with a big heart.
So things like Ghosts, what are some other favorites?
Emily: Ted Lasso.
Heidi: Ted Lasso! Oh, yeah, Community, Office, obviously.
And this show gets five stars for both quirkiness and big
heartedness. So if you are unfamiliar, Harry is an alien
who crash lands on Earth, and so to fit in, he kind of has to
cosplay as the town doctor. And as he does so, he learns all the
ups and downs of being human along the way. He's obsessed
with Law and Order and pie and his mortal enemy is a nine year
old boy, and the insults that they sling back and forth at
each other are hilarious. So if you need a summer show, this is
perfect. It's funny and it's heartfelt and it's not too
heavy. And if you're not into sci fi, I promise the sci fi is
more just like comedy than it is like heavy space travel stuff.
So I love the show. I've, I think I've re watched it three
times. I still, I laugh every time.
Emily: Well, you've harassed me about it for years now, so I am,
I am committing that I will finally watch this, because I'm
out of all my other shows, so I'm gonna watch this one.
Heidi: Well, I'm glad you got to the bottom of the bucket, and as
Sheriff Mike would say, Ladies love their buckets.
Emily: I'm excited to know what that means.
Heidi: And it is streaming on like three different things. So
I think it's on Sci Fi, it's on USA, and it's on Peacock, and it
might even be on Netflix. So it's easy to find these days.
Emily: Sweet.
Heidi: That is it for today's episode. Boundaries are the
secret ingredient for a summer that is both joyful and
successful.
Emily: And don't forget our teacher approved tip to create
your own summer sensorium list.
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.