205. Use This One-Hour Teacher Trick to Start the School Year Calm and Ready

This is episode 205 of Teacher Approved. You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I'm Heidi.

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.

We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to the show.

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're talking about how to use just one hour a week this summer to start the year ready and rested. And we're sharing a teacher approved tip for creating a summer planning ritual that actually sticks.

But first, it's time for a try it tomorrow, a favorite quick win that you can try in your life right away. Emily, what is our suggestion this week?

This week, try the five minute Friday flip. Do you like the alliteration?

If nothing else, the title is awesome.

Every Friday, spend just five minutes flipping through your teaching materials, whether that's your teacher binders, a curriculum guide, or even your phone's camera roll from this past school year. Just flip and notice what catches your eye, no pressure to do anything with what you find. Just let your brain start making some connections for next year.

I love this because it is gentle prep with zero guilt. You're just, you know, planting seeds for future planning, without the pressure to have it all figured out right now.

If you like this idea or anything else we share here on the podcast, would you take a second give us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts?

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 editable classroom seating chart maker. Tell us more about this, Emily.

Oh, we love this product so much. Not only will it help you at the start of the year, but it will be such a huge support all year long. One of the simplest, most effective behavior management tools at your disposal is your classroom seating arrangement. If you're intentional about how you assign seats, you can minimize or completely eliminate so many hassles.

In this product, we walk you step by step through our, I want to say patented system.

It should be patented.

Trademark, copyright, something. But we walk you through our system for strategic seating, and we give you over 90 different seating arrangements and list the pros and cons of each one.

And we even include seating options for the carpet, so you can help minimize any problems there as well.

Now, since you're not going to know your students at the start of the year, the strategy part of assigning seats isn't going to help you too much yet, but the desk arrangement part can be a huge lifesaver, even in the first few days. So the first thing you need to do is choose an arrangement that fits your seating options, whether you have desks or tables or those weird triangle table thingies, then you need to choose an arrangement that will fit your space.

The last three steps of choosing an arrangement are the most crucial but often overlooked. Choose a seating arrangement that supports your teaching style. If you do a lot of cooperative work, choose an arrangement that lets students work together. Also look for an arrangement that minimizes your walking. You're on your feet all day. Do yourself a favor, and make sure that you can reach each student seat in the minimum

And last of all, and this is the secret sauce, keep as number of steps. many students as possible, as close to you as possible. The number one deterrent for off task behavior is proximity to the teacher. So leverage that power as much as you can.

We walk you through all of this in the editable classroom seating chart maker, and you can find a link to that in the show notes. But if you want more information, make sure you go back to Episode 97 where we lay out this strategy in detail.

Well, now we are well into summer, and chances are good that you've had at least one moment so far where that little voice in your head asked, should you be doing something for school right now?

Oh, yeah, that critical little voice that whispers, everyone else is probably picking out their first week outfits and color coding their lesson plan binders, and you're watching Netflix at 2pm on a Tuesday??

I hate that voice so much.

I know it's a jerk.

She gets the better of me more times than I care to admit publicly. She's how you know before I know it, I find myself elbow deep in prep I didn't plan on doing, and then my summer relaxation turns into a guilt ridden productivity spiral. Ah, good times.

But we're not going to do that anymore. Instead, we're going to focus on doing the right things in small, steady steps that protect rest and build readiness. We promise, it really is possible to start the year feeling calm and prepared without sacrificing your summer sanity.

This week, we are talking about what just one intentional hour each week can do for your back to school prep. Gretchen Rubin, from the Happier Podcast, which is a podcast that we love, has a great hack that she calls Power Hour. She schedules time once a week to power through the tasks that she can't normally get herself to deal with.

And because it rhymes, you know, it's valid advice. So we are going to take Gretchen's Power Hour idea and turn it into teacher Power Hour. Very original, as you can tell, but instead of using that time to call the electric company or figure out your taxes, we're going to focus on our back to school tasks, and we've got a six step system to help you make it happen. We love a system.

The first step is to build a strong foundation by clarifying what matters to you. Second, start a list of Power Hour tasks so you don't waste precious minutes trying to figure out what to work on, which is always my downfall. Third, schedule your time. Fourth, and this is the hardest one, protect your time. Make sure you reschedule if another obligation conflicts with your time, and then make yourself actually do the work. And that's why that step is the hardest part.

And then comes the fun part. Step five is to celebrate your accomplishments, and then all you have to do is step six, which is to repeat it next week.

sound too hard, does it? So pour yourself a lemonade or throw on your walking shoes, and let's talk about how to use one hour a week to prep for back to school like the smart, seasoned teacher you are.

Let's start where we always do by clarifying what matters. Before you make a single list or organize a single supply, we want you to get clear on your goal. If you joined us for our recent webinar, we referred to this goal as your readiness anchor.

A readiness anchor is simply the answer to this question, how do you want to feel as you walk into your classroom on your first day back? For now, forget how you might feel or what you want to accomplish before then, or how you want your classroom to look, just ask yourself how you want to feel.

And then this feeling is going to become your North Star. And we cannot stress this enough, it's important to actually choose your word, not just think about choosing a word. If you don't name what you want, what happens is you end up chasing every task that crosses your mind, because you have no way of knowing which tasks are the ones that actually matter.

So choose your readiness anchor. Maybe you want to feel calm or grounded, maybe you want to feel excited or energized, maybe you want to feel organized or in control. However you want to feel is the exact right answer.

Here is why this matters so much. When you know how you want to feel, it becomes so much easier to prioritize your prep time. Every decision gets filtered through that goal. For example, if your readiness goal is to feel calm, then maybe you want to focus on tasks that reduce last minute scrambling, like printing your welcome letter, prepping your first day slides, or arranging your desks. And maybe you want to use our desk arrangement tool to help you with that.

Yeah, that would be handy dandy. But if your readiness goal is to feel excited, maybe your prep focuses on your favorite parts of teaching, like picking a fun new read aloud, or prepping a first week project that you can't wait to share with your students, or planning a classroom theme that gets you pumped to decorate.

See the difference? When your tasks align with your why, they stop feeling like chores and start feeling like confidence boosters. And we think this is so important that we have updated our BTS Success course to start with a whole module on teacher recovery and emotional anchoring, because everything else is going to flow from there.

So before you do anything else, pause this podcast and get clear on your readiness anchor. We're serious. This is your homework. Write it down. Put it somewhere that you can see it. Let it guide every choice you make about how to spend your summer prep time.

Okay, you got it? Do you have your word? Good. That's step one. Step two is to make your Power Hour task list. This is where you jot down all of the tasks that will contribute to your readiness goal. If your goal is to feel balanced, your list will be full of tasks like prepping freezer meals, creating standard operating procedures for repeated tasks and streamlining your workflow.

Ideally, try to use this time to focus on light touch prep. Light touch prep means low time, low effort, high payoff. These are the tasks that in one focused hour can move the needle significantly without draining your summer energy.

On the one hand, you could spend three hours deep cleaning your classroom library, or you could spend one hour creating a digital welcome packet that parents will reference all year long. Both are helpful, but one gives you way more bang for your buck.

Here are some examples of light touch prep that pack a punch. Creating templates for things that you know you will need, like your weekly newsletter format, your substitute plans and your parent communication scripts.

Drafting a first day slide deck with all of your procedures and expectations. You can always tweak it later, but having the bones ready means one less thing to stress about in August, and we have a whole set of Google slides that you can adapt to fit any procedure, and this will save you lots of time. Check out the link to our tell try tally talk slides in the show notes.

Even something as simple as setting up your digital grade book with student names, if you are lucky enough to already have your class list. That 10 minutes now can save you 30 minutes later.

The key here is choosing tasks that future you will genuinely thank present you for doing. And the beautiful thing is, these are exactly the kind of tasks that fit perfectly into one focused hour.

Remember, you're not trying to solve every classroom challenge or prep every lesson at this point. The goal is to set yourself up so that you can hit the ground running when it's time to actually get back to work.

Make sure you keep your list of Power Hour tasks somewhere handy. If you have our back to school readiness checklists, we recently added a Power Hour list, so you can download the updated file and then just copy the Power Hour sheet to your existing spreadsheet. If you already have them, it's super easy to do that.

If you don't have the back to school readiness checklists, this is your sign to grab them now. There are 50 pages in there, and knowing us, we'll probably add more to that over the summer.

Yeah, by the time this comes out, there might be two more pages.

Who knows. But all of these pages help you clarify your goals and maximize your time. They are a serious BTS lifesaver, and you can find them at the link in the show notes.

Power Hour can be a motivating way to tackle some meaningful tasks. But as every teacher knows, there are just some things that just have to get done, and we can't magic wand them away. Labels need to be made, folders need to be organized, copies need to be run. All the fun stuff. Unfortunately, all that tedious stuff is real and it's not going anywhere.

So here is our system for handling the must do tasks without letting them take over your summer. First, make your must do list. Get everything out of your head and onto paper. All of the copying, labeling, organizing, decorating, whatever you know has to happen before students walk through your door.

And then group similar tasks together. Make a list of all the copies you need to make. Make a list of everything that needs a label on it. Make a list of everything you need to finish for your wall displays. This is just so much more efficient than bouncing between different types of tasks.

Now to actually get those dreaded tasks done, assign each batch to one of your weekly summer prep hours. One week might be copy all the things, and another week might be label and organize supplies.

A little pro tip that works with anything, not just schoolwork, is to pair it. If it's not your favorite task, pair it with a treat. Get your favorite iced drink to sip while you stand over the copier. Listen to a fun audio book while you're organizing supplies, put on a movie in the background while you're cutting out bulletin board letters.

You could even lean into the summeriness of it all and sit on the patio while you stuff folders. You don't have to suffer through the tedious stuff. Make it as pleasant as possible. And remember, it's just one hour a week. You can do anything for one hour.

And if you want help prioritizing which tasks actually matter versus which ones you can skip, we break that down in BTS success too, so that you're not wasting time on busy work that won't actually help your classroom run smoother. And you can find a link to the course in the show notes.

Okay, so you've got your readiness goal. You know what light touch prep looks like, and you have your plan for the must do tasks. Now comes the really important part—actually making it happen.

These are steps three and four, schedule it and protect it. The secret to making it happen is treating this like any other important appointment in your life. Choose your hour. Maybe having a set hour each week will work best for you, or maybe it's more of a movable feast.

Oh, that sounds exciting. For you, Saturday morning before the rest of the house wakes up might work best. Maybe it's Tuesday evening after your yoga class, when you're already feeling calm and centered. Or maybe you hire a neighborhood team to come play with your kids on Wednesday afternoons while you escape to a coffee shop for an hour. The specific time doesn't matter. What matters is that it's consistent and

When you're looking at a blank calendar, it's easy to start out with good intentions. Following through, however, is a genuine challenge. If you're struggling to put your ideas into practice, go back to Episode 55 where we discuss another Gretchen Rubin idea, the four tendencies. This helps you pinpoint what it takes for you to meet your own inner expectations. That way you're leaning on your strengths and not your weaknesses.

One thing that might help with follow through is to make as many decisions ahead of time as possible. If it helps to have a loose structure, try assigning a theme to each week's Power Hour. Emily, why don't you share with us the sample plan for how you might use your summer hours?

Sure. So maybe week one, you're going to set your readiness goal and make your must do list. Get clear on what you're working toward, and then choose a quick win from your list and complete it right away to build that positive momentum. Then in week two, prep one light touch task that aligns with your readiness goal. So maybe that's making slides for your arrival procedure or your dismissal routine, and then batch one thing from your tedious tasks list.

And if you want help with those, there are priority lists and task batching lists and the Back To School Readiness Checklist to help you out.

And then in week three, you could plan and prep materials for your first day. No matter your readiness anchor goal, you're going to need a first day plan.

Week four, draft your communication templates, things like your welcome letter, your classroom newsletter format, or how to help students at home handouts. Also prepare everything that you will need for your meet the teacher open house.

And then in week five, plan something fun that excites you about the new year. Maybe it's a special first day activity or a themed unit you've been wanting to try.

That's just five hours, but it's five huge wins, and your August self is going to be so relieved. So it's time for step five in our Power Hour prep routine, which is to celebrate your accomplishments. You're showing up for yourself when it

I read a book called Tiny Habits, where he teaches you how to take little, teeny steps towards your goals by making these, like, micro habits, and then after you do it, you're supposed to celebrate. And so his example was like, if every time you wash your hands, you're gonna do five squats, then afterwards you should like, give yourself a high five towards the mirror, or you should like, do a little dance. And honestly, I

And step six is to do it all again. Decide what you want to work on next, schedule an hour for each week, and then follow through. The beauty of this one hour system is that you can adapt it to whatever you need in whatever season of summer you're in.

If you're in the early weeks of summer break and you want to do absolutely nothing school related for a while, cool, perfect. Start your one hour routine in a couple weeks. If you're headed back to school in a couple weeks and feeling behind, also perfect, you still have time to make a huge difference. You just might need maybe two or three power hours per week. That still gives you plenty of time to enjoy your summer and still start the year feeling ready.

So as you're listening, assuming you're not driving, open up your calendar and schedule your power hour for this week. Make sure you've clarified your readiness goal and have a list of essential tasks to help you meet that goal. Get everything on the calendar and protect that time. Once you're done working, take a minute to celebrate how much you got done, and then do it all again next week, and think how amazing you'll feel by the time that first day rolls around.

We would love to hear about your Power Hour plan. 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 create a calming planning ritual that signals prep time to your brain. So tell us about this, Heidi.

Well, one of the biggest challenges of summer prep is that our brains don't automatically switch into work mode when we are at home in our pajamas. So we want to create a simple ritual that helps signal to your brain that it's time to focus. This sounds serious, but I promise it doesn't have to be complicated. Maybe it's making a special cup of tea, lighting a candle or playing a specific playlist. Maybe it's sitting in a particular spot in your house or clearing off a specific

This may sound like a fluffy little time waster, but science backs us up on this. Prepping for a new school year can quietly trigger your brain's stress response. You're thinking about everything that went wrong last year, what might go wrong this year, and how much you have to do. That kind of pressure can make your brain feel like it's in danger. And when that happens, it shuts down the exact parts that you most need right now, the creativity, the focus, the problem solving.

And that's where a short calming ritual comes in. By taking a few minutes to breathe deeply, ground yourself, and reconnect with your purpose, you're activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and that's the part of your body that says, hey, you're safe, you've got this.

This ritual isn't just aimed at creating a nice feeling. It's about training your brain to treat planning time as a space of confidence and clarity, not panic or perfectionism. Spending five precious minutes of your hour to start peacefully will help you be much more productive during the rest of that hour.

And when your hour is up, consider having a closing ritual too. Close the laptop, blow out the candle, put away your supplies. This helps your brain transition back to summer mode, and it prevents that, I'm always thinking about school, feeling that can tend to creep in.

And throw in your mini celebration too. I want you to be having a mini dance party at the end of your power hour.

To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

credit to the book Zero Days by Ruth Ware. It's about a woman who's in a race against time to find the person who murdered her husband and clear her name as the main suspect.

Oh, wow.

Yes. It's really engaging, super fast paced thriller, and it's perfect for when you just want to get sucked into a book, which I recently did, so I blew through it in just a few days.

Well, that sounds like a perfect summer read.

What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

I'm giving extra credit to you, Emily.

Me??

We recently had our Teacher Summer Talk Summit, and it was so wonderful. And Emily crushed it. She has put so much work into this. I know on the user end, it probably doesn't seem like that much went into it, because you're just like, well, I listened to it. And there was some cute stuff on Facebook and Instagram, but that was months of work. She has worked so hard. So many late nights. You know, she'll be texting me at midnight, still at her computer. So all the extra

Yes, I loved that. It was a really great experience, even if I did have to work really hard, but I learned a lot, and hopefully next year will be easier.

Fingers crossed. That is it for today's episode. Remember, start with just one hour a week and your readiness goal. Make summer prep work for you, not against you.

And don't forget our teacher approved tip for creating a summer planning ritual. And if you're looking for more structured support in your planning, check out BTS Success at the link in the show notes.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm Heidi.

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.

You can connect with us and other teachers in the Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week. Bye for now.

Bye.