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Although its important to dedicate part of your summer to true relaxation, you
should set aside at least a few days to getting ahead for the new school year.
The teachers I know who work 40-50 hour weeks tend to spend quite a few days of
their summer breaks planning out lessons so all they have to do during the school
year is adapt the activities for their current group of students.
If you already know the standards youll need to teach and have a rough pacing
guide, you can do the vast majority of your planning now and save several hours
every single week during the school year.
40 hour workweek teachers also tend to go into their classrooms over the summer
to get organized. Its just too difficult to make thoughtful decisions about how your
classroom should run once your contractual year has started and youre swamped
with meetings, paperwork, and new demands on your time.
The key is to make sure youre using your summer to work on the right things:
the stuff that helps you systematize classroom routines and automate your
work in order to save time later. Thats what well focus on this week.
In this weeks club materials, youll find a PDF with eight things you can do now to
make BTS less stressful. Though you definitely dont have to do them all, if you
choose to work on school stuff this July, these are the things I recommend you
focus on.
You may want to batch these tasks: choose one week this summer to focus on
getting ahead on school stuff, and write each thing on your To-Do List for that week
so you have a realistic plan for what you will accomplish each day.
The 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club Angela Watson
Alternatively, you could dedicate one or two days now and a few days later in your
summer, or use one day a week to work on school stuff all summer long.
I really cant over-emphasize how critical the tasks on this checklist are for helping
you achieve work/life balance later on. They are a huge part of what enabled me to
work a 40 hour week when I was in the classroom, and I know they can make a big
difference for you, too!
Use the editable procedure planner youre receiving with this weeks materials to
help you think through how you want your classroom to run. It includes everything
from pencil sharpening to bathroom privileges to passing in papers to stacking
chairs on desks at the end of the school day.
Use your summer to figure out exactly WHAT you want kids to do, and HOW to
communicate those expectations to them.
You might be thinking, I know what I want kids to do, so I dont need to write
everything out. However, kids are not mind-readers, and if we dont want to repeat
The 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club Angela Watson
ourselves a million times, we need to be really clear about what we want. The more
specific you are about your expectations, the less room there will be for
students to misinterpret or push the limits of whats acceptable.
Plus, its surprisingly easy to get overwhelmed by everything else happening in the
classroom and forget the routine you wanted kids to follow, so write it down! Youll
also find that the procedure planner is an extremely useful document for your
substitute teachers to reference when students give conflicting instructions about
how the classroom is normally run.
You can't teach it all the first day, so Im providing an editable set of sample lesson
plans for elementary teachers to use during the first week of school--these
naturally integrate procedural instruction.
As you read through the sample lesson plans, notice how I have prioritized which
routines must be taught first thing, which can be taught later in the day, and which
can wait for later in the week. You might find that your priorities are different, so feel
free to move things around.
For an elementary teacher, how to move about in the classroom (no running), where
to hang coats and backpacks, and hand-raising policies are topics that will arise
naturally within the first half hour of students entering the room. Later, you can
practice hallway behavior, bathroom expectations, pencil sharpening routines, and
rules/conflict resolution. In the afternoon, you can teach students about heading
papers, homework procedures, and dismissal routines. On the second day, youll
explicitly reinforce what youve already taught, and add things such as how to
distribute supplies, and participate in teaching techniques you plan to use (thinkpair-share, partner reading, noise level monitoring devices, the 3 Before Me rule,
etc.)
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At the middle and high school level, a lot less detail is needed, and the introduction
of procedures needs to be more creative and engaging, since students will be
hearing a different set of rules and expectations for every class theyre assigned to.
You may want to:
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Teachers
that's part of the rule about being a responsible student. They should follow the
routines for working quietly without disrupting others because that's part of the rule
about respecting other people.
Another way to think about and explain rules is to call them goals (i.e., Goal #1:
Respect Yourself, Goal #2: Respect Others). Then you can introduce the routines and
procedures as a way to help students meet the goals. Instead of saying, "Being rude
is against the rules" youll say, "Our class goal is to be respectful at all times. A rude
tone does not help us meet our goal." Following the 'rules' then becomes a team
effort to meet the goals that students agreed upon from the beginning of the year,
rather than something you have to catch students doing or not doing so you can
punish them.
If you choose to have a whole class reward system or behavior management system,
make sure you choose something simple and not time-consuming. (Ask in the clubs
Facebook group if you want to brainstorm ideas with other teachers at your grade
level.)
One year, I taught at a school that had an awesome set of five "Rules of Respect" that
I thought were perfectly phrased and could serve as powerful classroom rules or
goals.
1. I will reflect RESPECT.
2. I will be a RESPONSIBLE student.
3. I will display GOOD MANNERS.
4. I will practice acts of KINDNESS.
5. I will promise to ALWAYS DO MY BEST!
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Next week: Im going to teach you how to automate and delegate routine classroom
tasks so you spend less time on management and upkeep. From the first day of
school, you can begin training your students in how to take ownership of how the
classroom operates and be responsible for everything from homework collection to
making sure your computers/tablets are working correctly. Ill walk you step by step
through how to design, introduce, and maintain a classroom job system that is genuinely
useful and that you can turn entirely over to your students.
The 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club Angela Watson