Teacher Approved Tips: Recognizing Support Staff and Intentional Summers [episode 66]

Emily
Hey, there. Thanks for joining us today for teacher approved tips, a special series from the teacher approved podcast. Every Thursday, we’ll be bringing you a weekly bonus episode highlighting new and favorite teacher approved tips that you can apply in your classroom today.

Emily
Our first tip is recognize your support staff. Heidi, can you tell us about this tip?

Heidi
I would love to. Our school secretaries, the custodians, librarians and all of our other support staff do so much for our schools. And I know you know that. This week, though, try to do something to recognize their hard work and make sure they know how much they are appreciated.

Heidi
And this would even be a good experience to involve your class with. When I taught second grade, I would have a discussion at the end of the year about all of the people it takes to keep our school running. We made a list of names on the board. And then I would put the kids in groups of like three or four.

Heidi
And let each group choose one of our school helpers to make a thank you poster for. And when I say poster, it’s a 12 by 18 piece of construction paper. We’re not going crazy here.

Emily
Manage those expectations.

Heidi
And after the first year, I learned it was important to have a discussion ahead of time about the kinds of things that should go on this poster. So I explained it should say thank you and mention specific things that the person does that we are grateful for. And then also say that it is from the whole class and not just the three kids who made the poster.

Heidi
Yes, they were happy to take credit. I found it was also helpful to point out that the content should fill most of the page. Maybe if you teach older kids, that’s not an issue. But some for some reason, little kids just are funny about writing really tiny in big spaces. Yep.

Heidi
But otherwise, I would just let the kids do their thing. And then I told them, they had to deliver the posters without getting caught. And I think that was their favorite part.

Emily
Ohh a secret mission.

Heidi
And I think the staff appreciated that because the kids thought they were so sneaky. And they of course, like a herd of dinosaurs, right, like so it just was it just added to the charm, I think.

Emily
Yeah, this is a fun idea if you’ve still got your students for the year, but even if you’re already out for summer, this is still a great time to thank your support staff.

Emily
While it’s still fresh in your mind, maybe you could write thank you notes to the people whose hard work means you can be a better teacher. Or you could take some treats into the school one day for the people who work in the building during the summer.

Emily
As teachers we know how much it means to just have our work recognized. Some teachers even save their thank you notes each year because they mean so much. So this would be a great way to pass on some of that love and support that helps make a tough job a little easier.

Emily
And our second tip today comes from our good friend Kelsey from Wife, Teacher, Mommy.

Kelsey Sorenson
Hey, Teacher Approved listeners. I am so excited to be here with you today and honored that Emily and Heidi invited me to come on their show and share this tip with you. And they are just incredible. They’re great friends of mine and they have such a great show so you have great taste in podcasts.

Kelsey Sorenson
First I want to introduce myself. My name is Kelsey Sorenson, I am a former teacher, current homeschool mom, TPT seller, podcaster, and certified life coach for teachers and homeschool parents over at Wife, Teacher, Mommy.

Kelsey Sorenson
And today I’m here to share a tip about two mistakes teachers make during their summers. Most will do one of these two things, and then how to strike the right balance between the two. So the two things that I see a lot of teachers doing over their summer are one they have too much busy.

Kelsey Sorenson
Too many things they’re doing over the summer, whether that’s they’re spending so much time preparing their classroom, getting all the things ready for that trying to do every single home improvement project, do every single appointment, everything they could think of over the summer and overload and overburden themselves.

Kelsey Sorenson
We find a lot of teachers do that because maybe like you know, the two and a half months sounds like a lot of time you’ve got all this time to do all these things. But as we know a lot of times things take longer than we think they will and then we just feel burned out before the school year even begins. So that is one thing that I see a lot of teachers do.

Kelsey Sorenson
Now the other thing is kind of the flip side of that it’s not enough preparation for the new school year. You spend your entire summer just feeling like I’m relaxing, I’m not doing anything related to school, maybe doing some of those non school related things, but you’re not like you’re just completely mentally checked out for that whole time.

Kelsey Sorenson
And maybe that’s an okay thing for a lot of you maybe if you’ve been a veteran teacher for a while, but the only thing is, if you feel like you have to take the full two to three months off for the summer, and you can’t even think about school, you can’t do anything, because you’re so burned out, then that means that maybe you were just burning yourself out too much the entire time.

Kelsey Sorenson
And if you’re not taking any time to think or plan or setting your intention for the new school year, then you’re just setting yourself up to repeat that again, and you’re not thinking of your future self. So I like to think of this concept. There’s this concept of future self where you think of your present self, and your future self as different people.

Kelsey Sorenson
Because when you think about it, you really are, like we change and grow and evolve over time and learn so many things like your future self knows things and does things that you don’t know, necessarily or don’t have the capacity to do right now. And the only way to set your future self up for success is by thinking of them now, like what can I do now, to make things easier for my future self?

Kelsey Sorenson
So what I want to do is kind of flip how you’re thinking about it. Taking the summer as an opportunity to rest, of course, we don’t want too much busy. Like I said, you don’t want to spend your full summer on this. But taking the opportunity to reflect, evaluate and figure out how the coming school year can be even better.

Kelsey Sorenson
And even if you feel like you had a pretty decent school year, there’s always more that could improve. There’s more you could different teaching methods you could learn or ways you could learn to help your mind set so you can kind of set yourself up for even more success and to handle the stressors as they come your way even better.

Kelsey Sorenson
So if you’ll find a way to strike that right balance of rejuvenation and education, learning how to make next year better and finding that time to rest, doing both. And as long as you take a moment to step back and think about how you’re going to strike that balance. you’re well on your way to finding that balance over your teacher summer.

Kelsey Sorenson
And for even more on how to do this, be sure to check out episode 79 of Wife Teacher Mommy the podcast, which is called The Secret to a Purposeful Teacher Summer and I kind of break down how you can do this and then be sure to subscribe while you’re there. If you like this show, there’s a good chance you’ll like mine too.

Kelsey Sorenson
And if you want to dive even more into that balance this summer, we’re hosting our annual summer conference called Educate & Rejuvenate with keynote speakers Joe Dombroski, Mr. D, Kristina Kuzmic, who is also incredible, an incredible lineup of speakers, life coaching, workouts and tons of bonuses and prizes. And it’s all just $19.

Kelsey Sorenson
So if you are listening to this episode, it’s happening on June 27, and 28 2023, so if you’re listening before that we’d love for you to join us, if not, we are doing this event every year and more events again. So you can go to educateandrejuvenate.com to learn more about our next event.

Kelsey Sorenson
Thank you so much for listening to me. And I hope that you were able to find and strike that right balance for your summer because you deserve it. Hopefully we’ll talk soon.

Emily
We love this fantastic tip from Kelsey. It goes hand in hand with our episode for Monday where we talked about how you need to balance readiness and recovery in your summer plans.

Heidi
You can connect with Kelsey at wifeteachermommy.com and on social media. And be sure to listen to her fabulous podcast also called Wife Teacher Mommy.

Emily
We love her podcast. Kelsey’s Educate and Rejuvenate Summer Conference is a must attend event. We were presenters at the conference last summer so we know it is well worth your time. Plus, it’s only $19 which is a total steal.

Heidi
That is the deal.

Emily
Head to our show notes to find a link to sign up for Educate and Rejuvenate.

Heidi
That’s it for today’s episode. Remember to take time to recognize your support staff and remember Kelsey is tip to help you approach summer in an intentional way.