The Friday Teacher Routine That Makes Monday Easier [Episode 287]

Heidi 0:01
This is episode 287 of Teacher Approved.

Heidi 0:06
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 0:28
We’re so glad you’re tuning in today. Let’s get to the show.

Emily 0:35
Hey there! Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re sharing a routine that will help make next week a lot lighter, and we’ve got a teacher-approved tip to help you take back your weekends.

Heidi 0:47
But first, 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’s our suggestion this week?

Emily 0:55
Okay, tomorrow, put a student in the director seat for one transition. So give the directions and then let your student director keep everyone on track and monitor the time.

Heidi 1:06
Oh yes, kids love that sort of thing. So you probably need to offer some coaching ahead of time about the sorts of things that a transition director should do, like giving reminders if they get too loud, or answering questions if anyone is confused, or keeping track of the time.

Emily 1:22
If you have a stopwatch handy, that’s perfect for this sort of thing. And if you like this idea or anything else we talk about today, we would so appreciate it if you shared this episode with one of your teacher friends. People really trust a recommendation from someone they know, so it actually helps us a lot to reach new listeners when you share it with your friends.

Heidi 1:41
All right. If you are listening to this podcast on the day it comes out, happy Monday! Hopefully, the week is off to a great start.

Emily 1:49
And if you’re listening on a different day, take a minute to remember your most recent Monday morning. How did it go?

Heidi 1:57
Well, if you are anything like me, it was somewhere on the spectrum between hectic and catastrophic. You know, you step through the doorway and it’s like a switch is flipped. Suddenly, all the things that you told yourself you were going to do over the weekend just come rushing back.

Emily 2:12
But you didn’t think of them all weekend. It’s like, it’s like Severance. It’s like your Innie and your Outie. So when you leave school, you transition to your Outie and you forget all the stuff that the Innie needs, and then when you come back and they step through the door into your classroom, you’re just like back as an Innie again, and now you remember all the things you forgot. If you haven’t seen Severance, you won’t appreciate that reference, but some of you are really going to like that reference.

Heidi 2:37
Well, I’m going to have to trust showing that because I have not seen Severance. But you know, you know that feeling. There’s the email you never answered, the copies you forgot to make, the lesson plan that needs 15 more minutes of work, and before you’ve even turned on the computer, you are somehow already behind.

Emily 2:54
That’s because you’re not gliding into a new week bright-eyed and ready to dig in. You’re stumbling through the door, dragging all of Friday’s leftovers with you.

Heidi 3:04
To some extent, everyone feels like this on a Monday morning. We are all haunted by the ghosts of to-do lists past, but I think this is a particularly challenging problem for teachers because teaching is an inherently open-loop job. There is always another thing you could do.

Emily 3:22
Yeah, the bell doesn’t ring, and then just like hand you a clean stopping point where you’re like, okay, that’s this week’s work. Won’t have to think about this again. On to a new week. If only.

Heidi 3:34
If only, that would be so nice. And in fact, I think sometimes the bell does exactly the opposite. The kids walk out the door, and you look around the room and think, “Okay, now I can finally get some work done.”

Emily 3:47
Yes. So unless we create some kind of deliberate stopping point, this week’s unfinished business just becomes next week’s “you’re already behind” list every week, over and over.

Heidi 4:00
And that sense of never being done with work is a big part of why teachers are so exhausted. So instead of trying to somehow finish everything before the weekends, which let’s be honest is never going to happen, what if we created a way to deliberately close out the work for the week anyway?

Emily 4:18
That’s where the weekly reset comes in. This is a short routine for rounding up the loose ends of one week, deciding what matters for the next, and then making it easier to start again.

Heidi 4:29
Think of a reset as a way to build a boundary around a job that does not naturally come with one, because even though you can’t finish everything, you can decide what happens to the things you didn’t finish, and then do some of the work that will make next week easier.

Emily 4:45
Then you can say, Okay, I’m done with this week. Walk out the door and enjoy your work-free weekend, guilt-free.

Heidi 4:52
And even better, enjoy a smooth, peaceful start to the new week. So today we are going to talk about how to create a weekly reset that fits into the reality of your school week.

Emily 5:03
Hopefully, by now you know us well enough to trust that we are not about to suggest a three-hour catch-up session or a three-page color-coded to-do list.

Heidi 5:12
Although a color-coded to-do list is one of my favorite things.

Emily 5:16
Yeah, I’m actually surprised there isn’t a one-page colored to-do list in this system, but it’s good. I do like making the list more than I actually like doing the list, so probably good it’s not even in here. To help you avoid that same trap we’re going to share a routine that creates space for getting that work done instead of leaving it up to “I’ll do it soon.”

Heidi 5:38
But before we can get into the how, let’s look at the why. The goal here is to get ready, not get caught up. You may still end the day with piles on your counters and grading in your inbox.

Emily 5:50
Yeah, we know that is not what you want to hear, but a manageable system has to account for reality, and the reality is that there are not enough hours in the day to do it all. So you need a way to identify what’s essential right now and what can reasonably wait.

Heidi 6:05
So another way to think of a weekly reset is to think of it as your minimum viable readiness plan. Although that’s way more of a mouthful. The ultimate goal with doing this is to give you clarity. You shouldn’t have to spend the first 30 minutes of the week figuring out where you’re going.

Emily 6:20
So let’s talk about how to make this part of your routine.

Heidi 6:24
Yeah, that routine part is important.

Emily 6:27
Yeah, because a routine does two things. First, it reduces decision fatigue and wasted time, and second, it ensures you’ve got all the essentials covered.

Heidi 6:36
And like all good routines, your weekly reset needs a standing appointment. Put it on the calendar like it’s a meeting you can’t move.

Emily 6:45
Yeah, really put it on the calendar. If it is just floating around in your mind and you tell yourself you’ll get to it, but then the week fills up and you know, it just doesn’t happen, especially on Friday because you’re tired and you you’re like, it’s not even on the calendar. I can just leave.

Heidi 6:59
Oh yeah, I’ve fallen into that trap many a time, but when the time is fixed, you make sure it actually happens. Now, any time that works for you is the right time for a reset. For me, I liked 11:20 to 11:50 on Fridays, so that was the half hour right before lunch.

Emily 7:17
Okay, and tell us why you picked that time because that definitely is not the time you would think for a reset.

Heidi 7:23
Yeah, that’s why it took me so long to land on that. I think it took me a few years to get that right, but I realized that I just could not plan effectively after school. My tank was empty, and so I would just decide that I was going to go home and I’d worry about it next week. But I realized that Friday morning, before the afternoon slump hit, my brain actually was still working, more or less.

Emily 7:48
The nice thing about doing your planning in the morning means your kid-free prep time can go towards things that have to happen outside your room, like making copies.

Heidi 7:56
Now I know that using class time for planning is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but it shouldn’t. Doing work tasks on work time is literally what a job is.

Emily 8:08
Right. As long as your students are doing something meaningful that they can manage without you having to directly supervise, then you’re not shortchanging anybody. A 30 minute reset once a week still leaves you over 2000 minutes of learning time.

Heidi 8:23
And that 30 minutes can make the other 2000 minutes so much more effective.

Emily 8:26
Yeah.

Heidi 8:27
So with my second graders, my official schedule said that that half hour was for a phonics review, and that review just happened to be a Between the Lions video.

Emily 8:37
And you’ve probably heard us talk about this before because it’s actually this really nice hack you might not have thought of if you if you’re not familiar with Between the Lions you are missing out it is a PBS series from like what early 2000s?

Heidi 8:51
Yeah like mid 2000s.

Emily 8:52
But it has a phonics emphasis and the first two seasons are really good.

Heidi 8:56
Yeah after that I think it was the financial crisis so they lost some of their funding and the quality does go down. You lose some of the puppets, and that’s what we’re here for. But those first seasons are so good. I used to feel guilty about showing a video every week because I also got the messaging that this was not actual teaching. But then one day, a student used a word that was unusual for a second grader, and they were able to tell me that they learned that word from the Between the Lions video we’d watched last week. So I stopped feeling guilty after that.

Emily 9:26
Yeah, they’re learning. We forget that you don’t have to be actively teaching for students to be learning. And besides educational videos, you could have students independently working at learning centers, finishing a review packet, doing a research project or even silently reading.

Heidi 9:42
Yeah. If you have to skip pulling small groups for a little bit, that’s okay. They’ll be fine, and all of those activities are beneficial for students all on their own. But if a midday reset really won’t fit your schedule, just get creative. If you still have brain power on Friday afternoon, that really is a natural place for reset.

Emily 10:02
Right. And think how awesome it would be to walk out the door Friday, knowing everything’s ready for Monday.

Heidi 10:07
But you aren’t limited to Fridays. You could just as easily reset on Tuesday afternoons instead.

Emily 10:13
Yeah, or make Wednesdays your common early day if you’re more of a morning person. We can’t relate to that, but good for you. Just any chunk of time that gives you the space to take stock of things right now is perfect.

Heidi 10:27
And technically, you don’t even need one big block of time. You could spread it out and reset one part of your schedule each day. So maybe on Mondays you reset math for the upcoming week, Tuesdays for literacy, and so on.

Emily 10:39
Prepping in steps like this is easier to schedule, but the trade-off is flexibility. If you lose one of your prep windows because you’re out sick or you’re stuck in a meeting, you have to find time to reset what needed to be done today as well as the next day’s reset.

Heidi 10:54
And then pretty soon you’ve got a whole clown car of resets that you need to find time for. But you know, if that setup works best for you. You can definitely find ways to make it work. Ultimately, the when matters a lot less than the how often. Find what actually fits your schedule and then protect that time.

Emily 11:13
Once you’ve scheduled your reset, it’s time to figure out how to spend those minutes.

Heidi 11:18
And again, here, do what’s most useful for you. But if you do want some structure so that you are not wasting that time figuring out where to start, we’ve got a framework. And for our reset, we are going to R E S E T.

Emily 11:34
Yes, an acronym our favorite. So that stands for round up, examine, sort, execute, tidy. The five steps that will help you look back at where you’ve been, look ahead at what’s coming, and decide what matters. Then you can put the pieces in place and leave things ready for next week.

Heidi 11:52
So let’s take a deeper look at each step, starting with R, roundup. By the end of the week, your tasks are like a herd of cattle wandering the prairie, and before you can do anything with any of them, you got to round them up.

Emily 12:05
Yeah, get your lasso. So start by writing down every task that’s floating around in your head, and don’t forget the odds and ends. Find the note you wrote on the back of a kid’s spelling test. Check the email your team leader just sent. Think of it like getting all the cows into the corral.

Heidi 12:22
We’re such cowgirls.

Emily 12:23
I know.

Heidi 12:25
Then look back at your week. What didn’t get done, and what needs to carry over? And is there anything you need to follow up on?

Emily 12:33
Next, look around the room. What’s on your desk? What’s piling up on the counter? Are there any stray tasks hiding in there? If so, break out your lasso and round them up.

Heidi 12:43
Isn’t it such a relief to know that you’re not about to be ambushed by something you forgot about? You can turn off the worry and then just trust that your list will keep you on track.

Emily 12:52
After the roundup, the next step is to examine. Go ahead and pull up next week’s calendar and know anything out of the ordinary that requires something from you.

Heidi 13:02
This step is essential. Back when I was teaching second grade, I would beat myself up over and over about poor time management. Why couldn’t I keep all my curriculum on track? How are we always falling behind? So one year, I started tracking how many weeks had five uninterrupted days.

Emily 13:20
And what did you discover?

Heidi 13:22
Well, it was pretty shocking. I can’t remember exactly, but it was something like there were five weeks with no schedule adjustments.

Emily 13:30
Oh my god!

Heidi 13:30
And most of those weeks landed at the start of the school year before anyone has even settles into routine. So I don’t even think we can count those as routine weeks.

Emily 13:39
So it’s basically a guarantee that something is headed your way next week: assemblies, meetings, early release, fire drills, observations, red ribbon week, picture day testing, all the things.

Heidi 13:51
And probably so much more. But you can’t plan for what you don’t know about. So flag anything unusual, and then figure out what it requires from you. Is it going to eat into your class time? Do you need to send home reminders? Do you need to buy a costume?

Emily 14:07
So write all of that down before a visit from the district catches you by surprise. And now you’ve collected all the stray tasks from last week and all the upcoming tasks for this week. That means your third step is to sort.

Heidi 14:21
This is where you decide what deserves your attention and when. Everything goes into one of four groups. Urgent tasks are do now. Anything that has to get done but isn’t as pressing is a do later task.

Emily 14:35
But the key is making sure you have a way to keep those do later tasks front and center because it’s really easy to feel like you’ve taken care of them just because you wrote them down. You put them on the do later list, isn’t it done?

Heidi 14:46
Yeah, it should be covered. And okay, I know this is not the same thing, but I do this every year with my Christmas cards. Like every year, I order super early. In fact, I already have my cards for this year, so you know, gold star to me. But once I’ve ordered them, my brain seems to think that the job is done, and then it just forgets that you know everything needs to be stuffed in an envelope and actually mailed to people.

Emily 15:12
Yeah, it’s such an easy trap to fall into. So if you’re kicking something down the road, give it a place to go. Write it on your calendar or set a reminder on your phone to come back to it before it’s due.

Heidi 15:22
Okay, that’s a good prompt. I need to put a reminder in my phone to deal with this in November.

Emily 15:27
I’ve started making my reminders in my phone my favorite app because I just accepted I can’t remember anything. I need to be reminded.

Heidi 15:36
Honest, I almost made that my extra credit for today, as the reminders.Okay, besides your due now and your due later categories, you have delegate. Maybe this is something that you could hand off to a teammate, or even better, maybe it’s something the kids can help take care of.

Emily 15:55
And then we have the best category: drop it. If something doesn’t absolutely need to happen, or if it’s not directly benefiting students, it’s not worth your time.

Heidi 16:05
I love this category so much because you get the satisfaction of crossing something off your list without actually having to do any work.

Emily 16:13
That’s like finding 20 bucks in your coat pocket.

Heidi 16:16
I love that.

Emily 16:17
Then take a look at your sorted tasks and identify what matters most. Which three tasks would make the biggest difference for your students or your well-being?

Heidi 16:26
Those are the tasks you need to prioritize. Add them to your schedule first. Dedicate time and energy to managing them, and then you can work in the less important obligations.

Emily 16:36
Okay, so far in our reset, we’ve rounded up, examined, and sorted. Those are all thinking tasks. Now it’s time for some action with our second E, execute. This is where you make the copies and find the slides and the books and everything else, and make sure it’s ready to go.

Heidi 16:52
And this is where having the whole week’s list already in front of you pays off, because now you can batch prep. So instead of making copies every day, you can copy what you need for the week in one trip.

Emily 17:04
Yeah, assuming your coworkers won’t mind you hogging the copier for 30 minutes, then batching really is a time saver. Every time you switch between different kinds of tasks, you lose a little time just reorienting yourself. Batching by type, copies with copies, emails with emails, really cuts that lost time out.

Heidi 17:25
But batching only gets you so far if you don’t know how to get yourself moving. So, what do you personally need to be successful? Some people need to eat the frog first or knock out the task that they’re dreading most, so that it stops looming over the rest of the day.

Emily 17:41
But some people do better starting with an easy win and then letting that momentum carry them into the harder stuff. So there’s no best solution here; just the one that gets you moving.

Heidi 17:52
Yes, set yourself up to succeed, however that looks for you. And then once the doing’s done, we only have the letter T left, so that means it’s time to tidy.

Emily 18:03
Do what you can to organize your physical space, even if that means putting all the loose papers in one stack instead of sorting them right now.

Heidi 18:10
And then don’t forget everyone’s least favorite task: digital tidy. Close the tabs you don’t need. Clear your inbox. Do what you can to reduce friction for the teacher who walks into that room next week, which also happens to be you.

Emily 18:24
When you’re tired, it’s so easy to tell yourself that you’ll just deal with it later. But don’t fall for that trick. Later is exactly when you’ll be annoyed that you didn’t just finish it.

Heidi 18:33
I know I have mentioned this before, but Sam over at Engineer Does Education posted about this a while back, and it has really stuck with me, so she showed the wreck of her classroom at the end of the first week of school, and she said she was cleaning it up before she left because, quote, that’s not how Friday Sam is going to treat Monday Sam.

Emily 18:53
Yeah, that’s such a compassionate way to look at the clutter problem. Even if you’re tired and annoyed right now, deal with at least some of it so the problem doesn’t compound later.

Heidi 19:03
So that is the framework for our weekly reset: round up, examine, sort, execute, and tidy. Hopefully, this is happening at a predictable time every week, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for flexibility. If you’ve got the time and energy, go ahead and do the full thing, and if you don’t, you can adapt.

Emily 19:22
Okay, so let’s go back to that Monday morning we started with. You walk into your classroom, and all those unfinished things from the previous week come rushing back. Except this time, let’s back up a few days.

Heidi 19:33
Yeah, it’s Friday afternoon, but instead of just closing your computer and hoping you’ll remember everything, you’ve taken a little time for your weekly reset. Are you completely caught up? No, but here’s what’s different: you’re not starting Monday carrying all of last week’s work debt.

Emily 19:50
That’s really what a weekly reset is about. You don’t have to finish everything before you can leave the week behind. You just need to know what you’re leaving unfinished, what happens to it next, and what you can do now to make Monday a little easier.

Heidi 20:02
And that’s a pretty good way to end a school week. So if this conversation was helpful, we would love to have you in the Teacher Approved Club. We dig into this kind of thing every month, the stuff that actually makes your week lighter, not just longer to-do lists.

Emily 20:16
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 build yourself a closing ritual for Friday afternoons. Okay, tell us about Heidi.

Heidi 20:29
Well, even if your weekly reset doesn’t happen on Friday, it still helps to have a small ritual that signals that the work week is over, and now you can enjoy your downtime. Because otherwise, you are leaving the door open for weekends spiraling about what’s not getting done.

Emily 20:45
So when we say ritual, we definitely don’t mean anything elaborate. Your ritual might include physically closing down your workspace or creating a defined stopping point, like I’m done with the week once I prep my welcome slides for Monday.

Heidi 20:58
And your transition ritual could even happen after you left the classroom. Maybe you save a particular podcast for the Friday drive home, or stop and treat yourself to a coffee from your favorite place.

Emily 21:09
The specific ritual doesn’t matter nearly as much as having a reliable signal that now you’re off duty. When you repeat that same cue regularly, it creates an automatic connection between the activity and the way you want to feel.

Heidi 21:23
So to wrap up the show, we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to. Emily, what gets your extra credit this week?

Emily 21:27
I’m giving extra credit to the Thera Ice Migraine Relief Cap. So it’s basically like a gel ice pack that’s designed to go on your head, but it’s super comfortable. It has really good reviews. It’s just it’s stretchy, so you don’t have like Velcro you’re trying to get on there. It’s made to keep the cold off of your ears, so your ears don’t get cold. So it just fits nicely around your face, and so it’s nice for headaches for sure. But I think also for like allergies or when your sinuses hurt, or your eyes are irritated and puffy, like any of those, it’s so soothing, and it just feels really nice. It’s well, it’s well made.

Heidi 22:09
It probably feel really nice when you come in after on a hot day and you’re all sweaty and feel like you’re gonna melt.

Emily 22:17
All right, what are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Heidi 22:19
Well, I’m giving extra credit to the Muse Apothecary Pillow Ritual Calming Pillow Mist.

Emily 22:26
Okay, tell me.

Heidi 22:27
And I specifically got the Cara Orange Fig and Blackberry Vanilla Scent.

Emily 22:31
Oh, that sounds amazing!

Heidi 22:33
It really does smell so good, but it’s not like an overwhelming fake perfumy smell that gives you a headache that you would need an ice cap for. And going back to our tip about having a transition ritual, I’m trying to make bedtime a lot more ritualized so I can signal to my brain that it’s time to shut down.

Emily 22:52
Yeah, it’s hard for us night owls.

Heidi 22:54
Yeah, so I was hoping that this scent could be another cue I could add to just help me transition for the rest of the day, and I really do like the scent. Now I’m like, oh, do I need a new scent for each season?

Emily 23:06
But then you’re going to be messing up your connection in your brain and that smell.

Heidi 23:10
That is true.

Emily 23:11
But you could probably do a different smell for a different connection.

Heidi 23:14
That’s that’s true. And I do not spray this on my pillow because that would definitely drive me nuts at about two in the morning.

Emily 23:21
I was wondering about that because I was like, “There’s no way she’s spraying smell on her bed.”

Heidi 23:25
So I do it more of as a room spray, like in my bedroom and the bathroom as I’m getting ready, and it, I haven’t noticed it lingering, so it’s just like a little scent cue.

Emily 23:34
That’s perfect. And I really was thinking that when we were talking about the Friday ritual, I was like, Oh, if you had something in your car that had a certain smell and you opened it up on Fridays, like some little air freshener you only open on Fridays, or something like that. That would be a good way to signal like it’s weekend time.

Heidi 23:50
Yes, that’s a really powerful stimulus for your brain. So something to think about, everyone.

Emily 23:54
Yeah, we’ll link to both of those in the show notes.

Heidi 23:57
And that’s it for today’s episode. Remember, you don’t have to finish everything before you are allowed to leave the week behind. You just need a system for managing what’s left undone.

Heidi 24:09
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I’m Heidi.

Emily 24:13
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 24:19
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 24:26
Bye.