Treat Yourself! Make a Back-to-School Teacher Self-Care Plan [episode 135]

Emily  0:37

Hey, there, thanks for joining us today. Today we are revisiting episode 69 with suggestions for making life a little easier during back to school season.

Emily  0:46

But first, we have a teacher approved tip for spoiling yourself at a stressful time I can get behind that. What can you tell us about that, Heidi?

Heidi  0:54

Well, we all know how crazy exhausting the start of the school year is. It takes so much work to get your class up and running and get your new crop of students all settled in. After working that hard, you deserve some pampering. Unfortunately, I have found that faculty rooms tend not to have on site massage therapists. So if you want some back to school pampering, you might have to be the one doing the pampering.

Emily  1:24

So one way to pamper yourself is to buy yourself some little presents now and put them away for later. Then when you’re crashing on the couch after your first day, or you’re dragging yourself home from the first week, you’ve got thoughtful little surprises waiting for you.

Heidi  1:42

Ideally, someone else would be showering you with the surprises. But let’s be honest, nobody else has quite as good as taste as you do. So you may as well just get exactly what you want. But you know, your future self will be excited about

Emily  1:57

Yes. So the key to making this work is remembering that you did it. So maybe like schedule a reminder on your phone or an email that arrives at four o’clock on the first day of school saying, don’t forget to check your math cabinet for your special surprise.

Heidi  2:14

I’m want an email that says that now.

Emily  2:17

Well go send yourself one. But you actually have to put the supplies in there. It’s just a big bummer.

Heidi  2:22

Yeah, that’d be a real big letdown. Anyone who makes it through the first day of school deserves piles of gold. But usually we have to settle for a face mask and a Door Dash gift card so that we don’t have to cook dinner.

Emily  2:35

After a long day not having to fix dinner is pretty good, though maybe better than gold.

Heidi  2:41

And if you want some more tips for how to take care of yourself during back to school season, keep listening. We’ve got some great suggestions from listeners about how they lighten the load when things get stressful.

Emily  2:52

We know it’s early to be talking about the start of the school year. But we want to give you plenty of time to make your game plan. If you want an event to look forward to after summer ends, you might need to buy those tickets now.

Heidi  3:06

Or if you want to stock up on freezer meals, you probably could use some extra time to get other cooking done.

Emily  3:11

As you listen today, be thinking about your biggest pain points with starting the new school year. And what gifts you can give yourself to ease some of that pain.

Heidi  3:20

And if the gifts you give yourself are literal wrapped gifts, just remember where you hid them.

Emily  3:26

Yeah. And I’d be excited to hear what you’re gifting yourself if you go ahead with this, so come and share it in the teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi  3:35

The past few weeks, we have been talking a lot about planning your summer.

Emily  3:39

And that may feel counterintuitive. I think a lot of us want a summer that’s light on the plans because the school year is planned to the minute right.

Heidi  3:47

So yeah, of course we want our summer to feel freer and lighter and allow room for spontaneous picnics and popsicles if you’re a more spontaneous person than I am. But if we make zero plans, we are just drifting. And the problem with drift is that it sets us up for trouble.

Emily  4:05

Right. If I don’t have any preparation in the summer, then once fall rolls around, it’s a frantic dash. Some people thrive on that, but it wears me out fast. So then I started the school year already fraying, spending nine months trying to catch my breath. And when summer rolls around again, I’m so exhausted, I insist on three months of no plans. And the cycle just repeats itself. Right?

Heidi  4:27

I came across a quote somewhere that was like, we can either deal with it when it shows up or when it blows up. Oh, yeah. And if we are not intentional with our summer plans, we are definitely leaving ourselves to the mercy of blow ups.

Emily  4:40

So what do we need to keep from blowing up? Well, obviously there’s school stuff and that’s what we’ve been talking about. There’s curriculum mapping and lesson prep and setting up our classrooms. If you go back to Episode 65 of our podcast, we walk you through how to make summer plans that include time for both recovery and back to school readiness.

Heidi  4:59

But we are more than just teachers, despite what our students may think we do not live in our classrooms.

Emily  5:05

Even if it feels like we do sometimes.

Heidi  5:08

So today we’re going to talk about what you can do during the summer to make life easier when school starts.

Emily  5:15

We are big fans of the idea of giving a gift to your future self. We talked about that all the time on the podcast. Somehow that just feels more motivating than doing something because I know I should do it. I’m doing it for my future self. I’m giving her a gift that is very motivating to me.

Heidi  5:31

So let’s give ourselves the gift of making life a little easier at the most hectic time of the year.

Emily  5:39

Some helpful gifts to yourself might be scheduling doctor checkups, and dentist appointments in the summer. Maybe a gift to your future self would be making an appointment with your stylist a couple months in advance because you know, they fill up fast in August.

Emily  5:52

I have to say I’ve done both of these things. I got my kids eye appointments way early. We’re already done normally I’m doing that like the week before school starts. Dentist appointments are already scheduled for summer and I already have my oldest hair appointment scheduled again. I’m usually frantically like, oh we can you fit us in before school starts. So those are some excellent ways you can give yourself future gifts.

Heidi  6:14

And I’ll gold stars Emily, that’s impressive. Your future self might appreciate you stocking up on the non perishable items that your family uses all year, so that your grocery shopping will be a little easier when school starts. Or maybe a gift is experimenting with a new system for staying on top of the laundry.

Emily 6:31

Or maybe your future self wants you to go spend a bunch of money at a bookstore so that you have books you’re eager to pick up on those nights when you’d normally tell yourself you’re too busy or too tired to read.

Heidi  6:43

Our future selves really do like to be spoiled.

Emily  6:46

Yeah, I like the idea that this isn’t just about getting tasks done. It’s also planning ahead to take care of yourself. So we asked our teacher approved Facebook group to share what they do in the summer to make their personal lives less crazy back to school time, and they shared some really great responses.

Heidi  7:01

So Jennifer says freezer meals are a huge help for her. She says I tried to do one big cooking day right before back to school to put 30 to 50 freezer meals in my freezer. Wow, Jennifery! My family and I then get a couple of reheated home cooked meals a week. And I don’t have to stress about shopping and cooking on a school night.

Emily  7:22

That is amazing that she can plan that far ahead. Wow. And for one crazy day of cooking her family has dinners for several weeks.

Heidi  7:30

We might get her to teach us a class on that word. That’s impressive.

Emily  7:33

If you can’t dedicate a day to batch cooking, or maybe don’t have room to store that many meals. Another idea is to just double the meals you’re already cooking this summer and put one of them in the freezer for the fall.

Heidi  7:45

Even if you are only able to get a few meals done, you’ll at least have a few nights that you won’t have to worry about dinner. And your future self will thank you every time you pull out one of those to reheat.

Emily  7:56

Even if it’s just the first day of school that you plan to head for you will be so grateful. Tracy had several good ideas to share. She says shop early. Plan a fun activity the week before school starts. Plan out lunches a week at a time. Plan out clothes a week at a time love that. Complete your calendar. You can even put your freezer meals on lunch plans on your calendar.

Heidi  8:18

Those are such great suggestions.

Emily  8:20

Yes, summer is a great time to try out some new lunches and it’s a great idea to plan your outfits along with your lunches. That would be so handy during those first crazy weeks back to school when the decision fatigue is very heavy.

Heidi  8:39

If you are really on top of it in advance, you could plan out your outfits for the first week or two. And then actually just like set them aside in the closet with your shoes and accessories and anything else. And then you’ve really given your future self a huge gift.

Emily  8:49

And I also love Tracy’s idea to intentionally plan a fun activity the week before school starts. I bid that really helps soak in every bit of summer and if that’s an activity with your family or friends, then it’s a good way to spend some extra time with them before you’re about to get really busy.

Heidi  9:04

And Dale actually had a similar suggestion. He said, In August I plan for something fun on a weekend day in late September. Buy tickets for a show, plan a party go to a festival etc. Having this time carved out in advance and seeing it on my calendar helps me avoid making every weekend all about work, especially at the beginning of the year. I love that idea. Dale, that is really so many clever tips rolled into one.

Emily  9:30

I love that he makes sure to plan his fun event ahead of the starting school craziness. So he has the time and energy to figure out the details and scheduling it in late September gives him something fun to look forward to when the work is draining.

Heidi  9:43

And I always felt like the end of September was when that haze of starting the year was just starting to lift. I could have really used a fun event about that time. But I had no reserve energy to be able to pull something together at that point. So using this summer to plan something fun for the fall is an absolutely genius idea.

Emily  10:04

And it’s also so mart to just get it on the calendar when I’m planning ahead. I always resist nailing down a specific date because something inevitably crops up and I don’t like to be locked into things.

Emily  10:15

But I found that it’s better to just put it on the calendar and accept the idea that I might have to reschedule. That’s at least keeping all the pieces on the game board as it were. If I intend to do something, but don’t really schedule it, it almost never happened.

Heidi  10:29

I think that’s a really common pitfall, or at least it is for me. But research shows that when we really want to do something, we often think that our desire to do it is strong enough to make it happen. So we under plan thinking that our motivation will carry us through. But spoiler alert, we do not.

Emily  10:48

Yeah, we overestimate that motivation. If we want to do the things that matter to us, we actually have to have concrete plans in place.

Heidi 10:57

So what plans do you need to put in place? What gift can you give your future self? Maybe it’s prepping freezer meals or planning lunches or outfits? Maybe it’s planning an activity or two to remind you that you are more than just a tired teacher.

Emily  11:13

If you need a little nudge, consider this question from Greg McEwan’s book Essentialism. He suggests asking yourself, what one thing could you do that would make the highest contribution to your life?

Heidi  11:25

So since we are focusing on back to school right now, let’s tweak that question a little. What one thing could you do to make your back to school transition, a little less taxing on your regular life?

Emily  11:38

Now you might instantly know the answer to that question. If not, you might want to list everything that comes to mind when you think of making your life smoother during such a chaotic time.

Heidi  11:48

Maybe what makes your life smoother is having plenty of time to relax in the evenings. Maybe it’s making a plan for at least a little exercise. Because you know, that’s the first thing you drop from your schedule when life gets hectic.

Emily  12:01

Or maybe your kids are in a ton of sports in the fall. And you need to find a way to make sport life work with teacher life. Once you’ve got your list going, it’s tempting to want to do all of the things. But that’s how we end up doing none of the things.

Heidi  12:14

So it’s important to be really critical here. What one thing will make the highest contribution to your back to school life? Once you’ve zeroed in on that key thing, the next step is to figure out how to make it happen.

Emily  12:28

So if protecting your energy is your priority, maybe you make that happen by saying no to any after school commitments for the first six weeks you’re back in school. Or maybe it means being okay with more takeout than you’d like while you get your feet under you.

Heidi  12:44

If your priority is not giving up on your healthy habits, maybe that means setting up an after school walking group with some other teachers. So you’re getting at least a little movement in your day. Or maybe you really dive into freezer meal prep this summer or figure out a new system for staying on top of the laundry.

Emily  13:01

So how much planning do we need to do here? The answer is as much as it takes to make sure it happens. That’s why we wanted to have this discussion early in the summer so that you have time to make the back to school season a little less draining.

Heidi  13:14

We would love to hear your suggestions for ways that we can make our personal lives less crazy at the start of the school year. So please come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi  13:25

That’s it for today’s episode. If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you shared it with a teacher friend who might enjoy it as well. That is the best way to help our show reach new listeners.

Emily  13:37

And be sure to check out our show notes for links to anything we mentioned in this episode. And if you haven’t yet, be sure to grab our end of year roadmap freebie to help you make the most of this summer. We have that linked in the show notes.