The Decide Once Strategy That Will Save Your Teacher Brain Next Year [episode 259]

Heidi 0:00
This is episode 259 of Teacher Approved.

Heidi 0:05
You’re listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I’m Heidi.

Emily 0:13
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 0:27
We’re so glad you’re tuning in today. Let’s get to the show.

Emily 0:31
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 0:47
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 0:55
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 1:20
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 1:34
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 1:42
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 1:51
It’s true we do, and they make it a little bit easier for us to keep doing our podcast. So thank you.

Heidi 1:58
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 2:14
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 2:28
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 2:47
Don’t make us look bad.

Heidi 2:50
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 2:58
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 3:07
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 3:37
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 3:54
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 4:05
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 4:14
He was a rough one. I can’t say I was too sad to say goodbye there.

Emily 4:17
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 4:37
Yes, but remember, the rule is that you are not allowed to like her more than us. Okay? Everybody got that?

Emily 4:43
Yes, absolutely, you, if you’re listening to us, you implicitly signed on the line that you wouldn’t do that.

Heidi 4:50
Loyalty contract.

Emily 4:51
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 5:10
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 5:38
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 5:50
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 6:02
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 6:14
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 6:35
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 6:52
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 7:09
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 7:28
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 7:43
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 8:07
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 8:29
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 8:47
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 9:00
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 9:17
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 9:32
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 9:53
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 10:08
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 10:24
Resentment is a big clue that you’re letting other people’s priorities dictate how you spend your time.

Emily 10:30
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 11:06
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 11:30
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 12:00
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 12:15
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 12:36
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 12:49
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 13:00
Yeah, you can just decide once that you save your best efforts for assignments that will inform your instruction.

Emily 13:06
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 13:15
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 13:39
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 13:54
Yes, very wise. Okay. Number three is to decide your flow of stuff.

Emily 14:01
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 14:15
I saw a quote once that has haunted me ever since, clutter is the physical manifestation of unmade decisions.

Emily 14:22
Oh my gosh, it’s so true.

Heidi 14:24
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 14:48
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 15:13
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 15:31
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 15:42
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 15:52
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 16:00
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 16:13
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 16:51
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 17:13
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 17:26
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 17:41
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 17:55
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 18:04
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 18:16
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 18:26
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 18:39
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 18:54
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 19:06
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 19:22
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 19:37
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 19:56
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 20:25
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 20:52
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 21:07
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 21:19
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 21:36
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 21:51
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 22:10
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 22:23
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 22:41
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 22:56
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 23:08
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 23:41
I think you still have ice cream PTSD.

Heidi 23:43
I do.

Emily 23:44
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 23:57
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.

Heidi 24:08
To wrap up the show we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

Emily 24:20
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 25:02
That’s what it sounds like.

Emily 25:03
Yeah. So anyway, I highly recommend this book if you want to do some more analog activities. This one’s really fun.

Heidi 25:11
I’ll have to check that out. I can add it to my analog bag.

Emily 25:14
Yes. Okay, what are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Heidi 25:17
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 25:33
There has to be a better way!

Heidi 25:36
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 25:52
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 26:08
Oh, oh, okay.

Emily 26:09
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 26:31
I didn’t even think of a bath mat.

Emily 26:32
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 26:45
Oh, well I’ll have to check that out.

Emily 26:47
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 27:04
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 27:21
Yeah.

Heidi 27:22
Got me on a quest.

Heidi 27:23
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 27:31
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 27:41
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I’m Heidi.

Emily 27:48
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 27:54
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 28:01
Bye.