The Unteachables Podcast

#110: Is a 40-hour work week achievable for teachers? Today's guest Angela Watson says YES!

• Claire English • Season 6 • Episode 110

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Feeling overwhelmed by endless lesson planning and grading?
Struggling to maintain work-life balance?
Unsure how AI can help lighten your workload?

In this episode, I chat with the incredible Angela Watson, veteran educator, instructional coach, and creator of the Truth for Teachers podcast. Angela has spent years helping teachers streamline their workload and reclaim their time.

We discuss her 40-Hour Teacher Workweek program, the power of AI for productivity, and practical strategies to work smarter, not harder.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE DISCUSS:

👉 The truth about achieving a realistic 40-hour workweek as a teacher
👉 How AI can help teachers reduce admin work without replacing them
👉 What we need to consider when it comes to students using AI
👉 Shifting from ‘just in case’ to ‘just in time’ learning to avoid burnout

Teaching is a marathon, not a sprint. Angela’s insights remind us that working smarter is possible by focusing on intentionality, systems, and self-compassion.

How to work with Angela:

🔗 All of Angela's goodies: https://courses.truthforteachers.com/?ref=97eb5e
🔗 Join the 40-Hour Teacher Workweek: https://courses.truthforteachers.com/courses/40-hour-full-year-2024?ref=97eb5e
🔗 The 40 Hour AI Membership: https://courses.truthforteachers.com/bundles/40-hour-AI?ref=97eb5e

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

Connect with me:


Speaker 1:

Oh, hi there, teachers, Welcome to the Unteachables podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama and a big old behavior nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behavior and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to, because we're not bouncers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game, changing strategies and I mean the things that we can actually do and action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and, dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode.

Speaker 1:

Hi all, welcome back to the Unteachables podcast. I am joined today by Angela Watson, who is the brilliant brain behind the Truth for Teachers podcast, but she's also a whiz in helping teachers get their time back in the classroom. I'm so excited to talk to her today, but I'm not going to dig into too much of that because I'm going to let her let her work shine. But hello, wonderful Angela. Thank you so much for joining me here in my little space of the podcasting world. Yeah, thanks for having me, Claire. So nice to have you here First up. If you don't know Angela, I'd like for her to give you a bit of an elevator pitch of you know. Who are you, what do you do and how do you help teachers.

Speaker 2:

Sure. So I spent 11 years as a classroom teacher and I've spent over a decade now as an instructional coach and educational consultant. So I started my website, which is now called truthforteacherscom, back in 2003, when I was in my third year of teaching. So, yeah, I've maintained that site for over two decades which is just wild and I have teachers who have been following me that entire time, which is just an incredible honor. You know to learn and grow together all of those years.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I just there wasn't a lot of resources out there. I wanted to start sharing. So that's what I did, and everything really evolved organically from there. I published six books, I started the Truth for Teachers podcast, created lots of online courses and then, eventually, the 40-Hour Teacher Workweek, which has now helped more than 60,000 educators, including administrators and instructional coaches, streamline their workload. So right now, I am focused on helping teachers use AI for productivity into streamline and creating resources to make it easier for teachers to support students in their productivity and their motivation. So I have a curriculum line and I'm working on a book that is called Finding Flow Solutions and that's really designed to help kids manage their time and energy and attention, which is something that I think we all need support with right now.

Speaker 1:

If obviously no one can see me right now, but my jaw is absolutely on the floor with the amount of stuff that you have done and just the impact that you've been able to have over your career, like your long career in teaching and then instructing, and that is. That's incredible. And, yeah, it's so nice to have you here to speak to my audience and I want to talk a lot more about, like the 40-hour work week and AI, and I think there's a lot of talk around AI now and using that in the classroom and you know whether it's good or bad or all of the things. But the reason why I'm very excited to talk to you as well is because obviously, I'm a podcast all about classroom management and behavior and so much of that.

Speaker 1:

Like the big foundation of that is how much capacity we have as teachers and you know how we feel and just all of the things. Like it all starts with us, doesn't it? And the work that you do. I feel like, even though it's not about classroom management per se, you work at this foundational level that all of my teachers could benefit greatly from. One of the things you do advocate for and you've mentioned it just before is teachers having a 40-hour work week and, you know, helping teachers get the skills and the tools to actually be able to achieve that. What are a few things that you do teach teachers that actually makes that a realistic goal, because it does seem like a bit of a pipe dream.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah it totally does, and I feel like teachers don't get professional development and productivity as part of their normal course. I was never taught how to handle all of my responsibilities. It was just assumed that teachers will figure it out, and so that's what you're left doing is just sort of reinventing the wheel every time something new is tossed on your plate and you're not really taught how to work effectively and efficiently. So there are definitely general productivity principles that are commonly used in the business world for people who teach home organization and home management lots of different settings but they don't always make their way into schools. So that's really what I'm passionate about.

Speaker 2:

And you're saying that it can seem impossible to work 40 hours a week, and I think it's important to acknowledge that for some teachers it is that not everyone can work their contractual work hours. So if that's not possible in your particular teaching position, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you and that you're not doing it right or that you should be more efficient, because every teacher's workload is different, your administration's different, your curriculum is different. So for me it's not so much about 40 hours but about maximizing your contractual hours. So whatever time you were actually paid to be at school and work. Really maximize that time so that you're not working endlessly on nights and weekends. So for some teachers they can work less than 40 hours. They can stick exactly to their contract. I was contracted actually for 38.5, which really not enough to get a lot of stuff done, but some teachers can go underneath. Some teachers might want to aim for a higher number. You can really choose what works best for your teaching context and you can adjust it week by week. So if you know that you have parent conferences or report cards or something coming up, you can choose a higher target number. So the purpose really is intentionality, so that work doesn't just keep expanding to fill every spare moment of your life.

Speaker 2:

So my advice is for teachers to decide at the start of each week how many hours are you willing to work? Look at what's coming up in your personal life, look at what's happening at school and make a decision. If you're contracted to work 40 hours and you think that 50 is going to be about right, that's a good balance. You're not going to be able to get everything done, necessarily, but you're also not going to stay until it's all done, because it's never all done. So you can decide in advance how much time of my life my one wild and precious life am I willing to spend doing school-related tasks this week and then decide when you're going to do those hours. So will you go in an hour early on Tuesday and Thursday, will you stay late on Friday afternoon, will you not do any extra hours beyond your contractual hours Whatever is necessary for you that week and then, most importantly, decide what you're going to get done during those time periods so you're not just showing up and putting out fires, you know, and responding to email. You've already decided.

Speaker 2:

Okay, monday afternoons is when I'm going to grade papers. Tuesday morning I go in a half hour early. I make my photocopies. Friday I finish up all of my you know organization materials for the week ahead. Create that kind of schedule for yourself that can be flexible. You can adjust it each week, but the idea is that you're not just going into work and sort of puttering around the classroom and just doing whatever seems most urgent at the moment, that you have really set aside goals to say, okay, these are the most important aspects of my job.

Speaker 2:

Lesson planning and grading, for example, are two of the most essential things that teachers do and we're often stuck doing that on our own on weekends, when we're tired, when we're with our families, when we're distracted, when we've got other things going on.

Speaker 2:

These are really important tasks. They deserve to be prioritized. So, really being intentional about what you're going to do and when, and then leaving in buffer time for all those unexpected things because there's always going to be more things that crop up you don't want to overschedule yourself or be overly ambitious in what you're trying to accomplish. Realizing that it's never going to all get done, I think, is really important, and that you can leave it on Friday. It will still be there Monday. You do not have to do it over the weekend. There will always be something more. It's like parenting right, there's always something more that you could do for your kids, and knowing that that work doesn't end, but you can choose what's most impactful where am I going to spend my time and energy and when am I going to spend that time? What am I going to work on? It kind of gives you back a little bit of that power, instead of feeling like I'm just working and working constantly and I'm never done so much of what you just said was like a synthesis of these ideas.

Speaker 1:

I've had in my head around what I believe about this topic and you've just articulated it so beautifully. The first thing I loved that you said was if you have to work more than your contractual hours, that is a reality sometimes and it's not your fault, because we can work and work, and work and work, and you know, prioritise and all the rest of it. But sometimes it still won't be enough. And the fact that you've acknowledged that is so powerful, and also the fact that you're saying and it's not all going to get done because you have to prioritise things.

Speaker 1:

And I fell into this massive trap when I was first teaching, where everything was important, I had to prioritize things. And I fell into this massive trap when I was first teaching, where everything was important, I had to do everything. Everything had to be done perfectly, everything had to be done. I was a very proud I still am a very proud person very, very stubborn, but everything had to be done to a standard that I'd be very happy with presenting, where now I'm like, actually, maybe this can be something that's not as important and I can just put together an email or you know, like. So, just really thinking about the fact that we don't have to have everything all sorted all the time, you know, and it is a choice, I just everything you said just resonated so much with me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for teachers who are perfectionists or just have very high standards for themselves, one of the phrases that we talk about a lot in 40 hour is relax your standards to a level that no one else will notice but you, because there's a lot of things that we're doing that no one else even notices we're doing. And then what happens is we get resentful about it. Right, because it's like I spent all this time setting everything up and no one even noticed, no one even cared. You know, I organized all this stuff in the class library and the students just came in and, you know, toss the books around. Well, relax your standards Like no one asked you to stay after school for three hours to reorganize the library. We can empower kids to create organizational systems that make sense for them and maintain them. You know, think about how you really want to be spending your time and make sure that you're not creating these standards for yourself that are so high that no one else is really even noticing and that really aren't impacting kids.

Speaker 1:

I feel like that can that breeds resentment with your colleagues as well, because you can feel like, oh well, I'm doing all of this stuff and I feel like I'm the only one doing it, or you know why am I getting acknowledged for this? Or you know, it can kind of breed resentment in that way as well, and what do you think about this? So I don't know if it's the same in the school that you worked at or in. I'm sure you've worked with so many teachers that I'm sure would be talking about this stuff. But do you think there's a culture in schools where people want to keep their resources really close and not really want to share and like, do you feel like that's still a thing? Because I felt like that very heavily, like people were hoarding resources and like I did this work so I'm not going to share it.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think it depends on the school culture, but I also think that teachers are set up in a way to compete with one another. You know, your test scores are compared to your colleagues' test scores and you know, when we set up that kind of competitive atmosphere instead of collaborative atmosphere, it makes people not want to share. And I think there's also the issue of not wanting to draw attention to yourself too, you know, to wanting to stay under the radar. If you have something that's really good you share and other people start doing it, then they might pick it apart. The administrator might come in and be like I don't like this.

Speaker 2:

So you can kind of get in this habit of just holding up in your classroom and not sharing, not collaborating, and it really does make the work so much more difficult and it's compared to a more an atmosphere in which you feel like you can talk openly about what you're doing and that you can have shared ownership of the activities and the work, instead of feeling like you know you're isolated and teaching such an isolating profession right Like you spend so much time alone figuring things out on your own. And you know, coming together with other teachers really is a big part of just keeping up with everything and maintaining your mental health as well. Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for your insights on that, because it's something that has always popped up in the work that I've done and the teachers I've worked with, and just in schools that I've been in, where people just really want to hold on to things. And, yeah, it is a cultural thing, absolutely, and I also think it's a bit of a hierarchical thing where, like, there aren't a lot of jobs going in leadership, so people are kind of like scrambling and, you know, trying to trying to fight for those things, and they want to be the ones that shine. I don't want to have people taking, you know, their work and making it look like it's there. So, yeah, it's really. It's just an interesting point. It's an interesting aside that I was thinking of A big part of this.

Speaker 1:

There's been a big shift in the last couple of years, hasn't there? Towards AI, and this is probably a dream for the teachers you work with, because I'm sure that you're all over this. What does it mean, though, to be, because you talk about being AI literate what does it mean to be AI literate and how can that help us in our teaching practice and just in general with the work that we're doing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's really important to understand what we're using and why we're using it, to be really intentional with these tech tools, because they're not designed by educators. You know these are for profit companies. So we need to really be very careful about what we're bringing into our classroom, what we're using with students, and we need to understand how it works. And because AI is such a new thing and evolving so quickly and I think even the people who are working on it don't fully understand it, there's a lot of unknowns here. But what I know from past innovations in teaching is that we can't wait until we see the end outcome to decide if we're going to jump into the game. You know, when I started teaching, cell phones were not really a thing, you know, certainly not a smartphone, certainly not something that students would carry around. And the advice that I gave around cell phones in the beginning was like, oh, this is so cool, we have another device in the classroom and you know, if you don't have enough computers or you have to take your kids to the computer lab, well, now they can use their phones. I wouldn't give that same advice now, now that I know what I know about technology addiction, about screen addiction, about kids' attention spans, about the disruptions, cyberbullying in 2025, I would give different advice, but we couldn't just tune it out until we knew the end result and that's how I'm feeling about AI is that you know there are certainly things to be cautious about and we should be aware of them, but to just stick our head in the sand is not going to work, just like it wouldn't have worked with cell phones. It's got to be something where we have to get comfortable with sort of building the plane while we're flying it. So that's why I have 40-hour AI designed to help teachers learn how to navigate the ethics of this. You know why is it okay for teachers to use it and not students? When is it okay to use? When isn't it okay to use? How do we protect privacy? But it really is just an absolutely transformational development in terms of streamlining for teachers.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I have seen English teachers in particular burst into tears when they see that they can help and support with giving personalized feedback on essays. You know, helping students, you know, understand what next steps they need to take in their writing to improve is extremely time consuming. What next steps they need to take in their writing to improve is extremely time consuming. I feel like ELA teachers, you know, are the ones who tend to feel like they have the biggest workload. There's just no way to avoid when you have all these essays to grade, and AI really is a game changer for that for lesson plans, for email, for documentation, for lots of stuff that teachers do.

Speaker 2:

So what I like to try to do is shift from making it something extra one more thing that you have to learn or remember to do and really help teachers integrate it into their regular processes. So, whatever you normally do when you're planning a lesson or when you're grading, to make this just a normal part of that process. So most of the trainings are like five minutes or less. It tells you how to do something very specific that you would normally do on your own, and then how to streamline it or how to do it more effectively and efficiently with AI. So I really like Magic School is a great tool. There's a teacher facing side and a student facing side, so you can set up the bots to tutor your students, give them feedback, to teach them a concept. So instead of you reteaching a lesson in a small group, this is something that they could do on their own is interact with the bot, because that's another thing that teachers don't have enough time for. Right, is that follow-up, that differentiation. Ai is so powerful for that. So Magic School is great.

Speaker 2:

I love DiffIt, brisk Teaching Snorkel is another one for student assessment. There's lots and lots of really great tools, but I think the most important thing is to find something that works for you and to not feel like you have to use it for the sake of using it, but really look at what are the things that you're doing that you feel like are just taking up way too much time, and maybe AI could help with that. So you know, if you need to write an email to a parent and you need to word it a little bit more professionally, you can just get onto chat GPT and just be like hey, I need to tell this parent that their kid is doing X, y and Z, but I need to say it in a really empathetic, kind way Um, can you, can you rephrase this for me? And you can literally just type that in or say that, speak that into the microphone for chat GPT and it will come up with something that is so much better than probably what you would have done on your own it certainly is the case for me and just say, ah, that's too long, or I went a little shorter. You know, I went a little more professional. It's going to be a text message instead of an email and it will modify all of that for you.

Speaker 2:

So these you know these days of when we had to sort of labor over every individual word, you know, or try to take the actual lesson plans that you use to teach and turn them into something that you can submit. You know, a formal lesson plan according to the right format. Ai is great for that and that really frees you up to do the stuff that you do best as a teacher, which is connect with kids, build relationships, community, like all of the things that we love to do, the creativity of teaching. This can free you up for that. So you know, there's down's, downfalls, pitfalls, for sure, but that's the upside of it and it's here to stay. So I feel like we should take advantage of the resources that we have, particularly if they're free it makes me think about.

Speaker 1:

So just before I moved to New Zealand, I was in an assistant head role and one of my other assistant heads would always be like Claire, can you please write this email for me, because she thought I was really good at writing, writing emails. I mean, I'm an English teacher.

Speaker 1:

So, by the way, that feedback, the English feedback, and all that stuff that is revolutionary because, my gosh, I feel like most of my holidays are taken up by marking, like you know, grading 200 papers and giving feedback and it's just absolutely intense.

Speaker 1:

But she always saw me as the go-to for emails and I'm like I'll just put them through AI, like just put it through AI, just, you know, just give them the information and say, can you please edit this and? Or I put some dot points in, like it is because of my role and I was in senior leadership, I also taught, but I was in senior leadership and a lot of that stuff was like administrative. Like you know, let's send some emails, let's write some letters up, let's draft this, let's draft that. Ai was absolutely game changing. It is just, and it is now as well, and I'm sure you use it with the work that you do, and I use it in the work that I do because it just frees you up for the creativity and, you know, for the things that you absolutely can do as a human being, but the things kind of like it just takes that load off, the things that we don't have to be doing.

Speaker 1:

Really, yes yeah, you spoke about some hesitations and you spoke about some pitfalls and like some potential things that might be wrong with using AI. Or maybe people just think a bit scary about AI, like what might be the hesitations in schools and adopting AI.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of folks worry that it's going to replace them, and I think that's a legitimate fear, because we've seen schools try to use technology to replace teachers in the past. It never really works. We saw, I think, during the pandemic, when we attempted to do distance learning, that there is nothing like a human teacher face-to-face in a classroom with children. There just isn't. So, you know, I think that it's important for teachers to be AI literate and to take these concerns they have in order to help shape the future of schools, because we don't want people who run for-profit AI tech companies to make the decisions for us and we don't want people who are very far removed from classrooms to make all the decisions. We really need folks who are working in schools to say, hey, this is what we need, this is what our students need, this is the direction we want to see this go in. We want to help, you know, we want to be able to streamline some of our administrative tasks so that we can focus on these other things with kids and really shape the way that it's used, so that it's not thought of something where, oh, we can just put kids on a device all day long and have AI teach it. We know that's not going to work as teachers. So I think it's important to have that perspective, to understand what it is, what it can do, what it can't do, and that way you can have a voice in how things move forward, you know, to ensure that it's not replacing you and it's not replacing your creativity.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned the creativity piece, too, and I think that's so important that we realize that AI can be a fantastic brainstorming partner. It can take something that you've made and clean it up, make it better, streamline it, make it clearer. I find that AI is a great enhancement to my creativity. Anytime I'm stuck, I'm like what's another way to say this, what's another word for this? What else could I do here? What's another way to teach this to students? What's an example that I could give kids for this? It really is just a great brainstorming partner.

Speaker 2:

This, like it, really is just a great brainstorming partner, and I find that you know, it's not so much about replacing or taking away your creativity, but really allowing you to be the best teacher that you can be. And when you look at it that way and you approach it that way, I think that that really has a positive impact on the future, because we don't know what's going to happen with AI and I think it will be a mixed bag. I think there will be, just like with cell phones, just like with social media. There will be some great things that come from them, there will be some disastrous things, but we can still move forward with it. Anyways, we can find those positive ways to utilize it to help us do our jobs more effectively and efficiently.

Speaker 1:

I think for teachers absolutely. I think one of the things that I hear a lot is with students, so them using AI, and you mentioned it before where, like, teachers use AI but then students can't use AI like what's the boundary there? And we're navigating this whole new world of AI where students can just take an assessment and run it through AI and get AI to do that for them. Like, what advice would you give to teachers around student use of AI?

Speaker 2:

You know teachers have been doing lots of different things. You know some just draw a hard line in the sand and say you know, this is not just about getting to the answer, it's about learning how to think, and if you have AI doing the thinking for you, then you're not learning. So no, we're not using AI, and that's legitimate. And I think every teacher knows their curriculum, their students, their learning context best. I think that's a legitimate thing to do. And then at the other end of the spectrum and I think it is a spectrum of lots of different approaches we have teachers who are openly using AI with students in the classroom, allowing them to incorporate it in designated ways for specific assignments, in designated ways for specific assignments, having kids analyze AI's output to notice like is this better than what you would have written on your own? What did AI do? That was different? How can we fact check it? How can we be sure that it's accurate and really teaching kids how to analyze it, really embracing it and working it into the curriculum so that it can help students kind of get past those pieces that they can get bogged down on too. You know it can really. It can help them brainstorm as they're writing. It can help you know correct some of their work. It can help them stop focusing on things like am I spelling this word correctly? And just keep writing. So it can be a really beneficial strategy for kids too.

Speaker 2:

But it is difficult right now, particularly since a lot of schools don't have policies around AI yet. They don't have guidelines, and so it seems like at least in the US, a lot of teachers are sort of on their own. There's no school-wide strategy or approach. So I think we're still in the beginning stages of it, but ultimately I think we're going to reach a place where we guide students to learn when is it appropriate to use AI. I think that's really the ideal is to help them think about it. When is it going to be useful, when is it just doing the work for you and preventing you from learning, and when is it helping you learn? So you know that's it's a lot easier to just ban it or to just do everything paper and pencil, but ultimately I think that's where we want to get with kids is to help them, bring them into that decision making and analyzation so that they understand responsible AI use, because it just it is a part of life now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and you have to kind of lean into it, don't you? Because I'm sure the conversation around Google was exactly the same, I'm sure that the conversation around having a smartphone was the same, and like there are things that it's inevitable, like we are in an age where we are going to be moving forward with AI. This is the trajectory and you're right, we just need to lean into AI in a way that works for our learners. You can tell when you know you said you know your learner you can tell when a student has not written their own work.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, it's so obvious, yeah, I also think it's going to.

Speaker 1:

I think my thoughts around AI is going to change the way that we assess student learning.

Speaker 1:

So in English I'm just thinking about my subject you would get them to write write an essay, but maybe now you'd have to submit your analysis of the text and, like you know, prove your kind of conceptual understanding of the text, and there are certain things that you can do to, um, I guess it's about showing, like you know, when you show the maths working out, so you haven't used a calculator, it's that kind of thing, isn't it? But that's how I see myself kind of getting around AI and making sure students have done their own thinking and done their own work. But you know, you go into the worlds outside of school and you will be using AI in the workplace, and so I think we also have a responsibility to equip students with the tool. There are so many things around AI and you're right, it's like this new landscape that we have. You know we're treading the path for the first time, so it's just, you know, we're just working out as we go along.

Speaker 2:

It is, and it's a lot, especially when you know it feels like there's been so many other changes, particularly over the last five years, for teachers and students in the way we do school. It's a lot and I understand the frustration around it. So, you know, my hope is that teachers can use it in their own personal work and then they can start to understand it a little bit better and see the possibilities of it, instead of it just being, you know, this inconvenience that makes them change the way they teach, which is, you know, it's draining. I get that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. You were speaking about some of the kind of tools like magic, magic school before and just a couple of other ways that teachers can utilize AI. But when I was looking at all of your brilliant work, I saw that you were talking about, like just-in-time strategies, rather than you know, just in case. So I wanted to talk to you about a couple of those. So like what are a couple of actionable just-in-time strategies teachers can use immediately to make their teaching and their lives a little bit easier so they can live their beautiful lives and not have to work outside of that 40 hours if they don't choose to do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, I think that's.

Speaker 2:

Another sort of problem of the modern age is that we have so much information now, you know it used to be the challenge was going to find the information, having to go to a library and look it up, and now we're just constantly bombarded with things all the time and it's really easy to get bogged down in trying to remember everything or learn everything just in case. Let me explore all these different tools, just in case I ever need to use it. Let me, you know, learn about this kind of you know, behavior issue or neuroscience issue, you know, or new development, just in case it's ever relevant. I think instead we can look at, instead of just in case learning, look at just-in-time learning, so knowing where to go and how to find the information at the time that you need it, instead of trying to carry all of this stuff around in your working memory and trying to collect and organize teaching ideas. That's another thing that I see that older teachers in particular seem to have a difficult time with, because, you know, when we first started teaching I started teaching in the 90s and it was very difficult to get teaching ideas you had to go buy the teaching books and make the photocopies, and so we would collect. You know the whole stereotype of teachers, just like hoarding everything and keeping everything for 30 years, and there's this empty plastic container. You don't even know what you're going to do it with, but you can't do with it, but you can't throw it out because you might need it. It's just in case. It's learning that, you know, make you.

Speaker 2:

Being a good teacher does not come from your stuff, it's you. You are what makes your classroom, it's not your stuff. You don't have to keep everything, you don't have to know everything, you don't have to collect every possible teaching resource. And that really ties into saving yourself time later, because the more stuff that you have, the more time you take maintaining it, organizing it, straightening up, looking through things, and I see that a lot with lesson planning. So teachers are thinking that they're planning in advance, but really what they've done is they've narrowed it down to like four or five different things. And there's this idea that I have to wait until the night before the lesson, after I've seen what kids did that day, to try to plan the next day's lesson, because I, you know, I have to be responsive to student needs and the reality is when you you know, when you're familiar with your curriculum and your grade level. It's not obvious at first when you're new to your curriculum or to your grade level, but over time you start to realize okay, this is where kids normally have problems, this is the part that normally doesn't stick, and you start to see those patterns and then you can prepare for that, instead of always having to plan the night before Because a lot of teachers are going in, you know, the night before and they're looking through like 15 different ideas Like I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, and it's overwhelming because there's so much out there.

Speaker 2:

So, instead of trying to collect all these different ideas just in case you ever need them or, you know, having four extra things to do just in case we have extra time in class, you know which, for the most part, is not really the case to accumulate everything and to trust yourself, trust that you can find what you need, trust that you can get the resources really coming from this abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset.

Speaker 2:

And making decisions I think is another piece of that too, of not just sort of leaving it like, well, maybe I'll either do this one or this one. It's like no, just make the decision, write it down. That's what you're doing, because when you're stuck in that day by day lesson planning trap, then you never get to relax, you never get a night off because you're always worried about what you're going to do the next day. And that, to me, is is one of the the biggest stressors for teachers, and so much of it is centered on this idea that that's what we have to do, to be responsive to kids, to kids needs, and it really is not true. We can plan for scaffolding, we can plan for going back and reteaching, instead of waiting till the night before to figure out what we're going to do for that. So that's a lot to say about just in time strategies, but I feel like it's a big issue that can really stretch out into lots of different areas.

Speaker 1:

It's like you saw a vision of me in my first few years of teaching. You know there was this big push for project-based learning and there was a big push for concept-based teaching and you know, I obviously like there are things that we can like weave into our practice now. But because there was like this big push around those things, I felt like every lesson had to be really innovative and really exciting and so the Nate, like one lesson was taking like five hours to plan. I'm like this is ridiculous. How can I do this? So I absolutely love everything that you've just said. It just resonates so much and I know that's going to resonate with my listeners as well. Listen, Angela, if you could go back in time because that you said you started teaching in the 90s and a lot has changed since then if you could go back to your very first year of teaching, knowing what you know now, and give yourself a piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be?

Speaker 2:

I would tell myself to stop trying to find the definitive system that will work forever and instead to practice non-attachment. So what I mean by that is I am a person who feels like there's an optimal way to do things. I want to find the optimal way, and so I would do things. Like you know, I remember one year we had new state standards come in and so I wrote them. We had to display them for the students, so I wrote them all in chart strips and laminated them. It took hours and hours and hours. But I'm like well, now I'm good, now I have them. They're like all organized in this you you know little box that I have them like tabs so I can find them. Well, the standards changed. Three years later we had all new standards.

Speaker 2:

So all that work was for nothing, and I didn't realize that as a young teacher, how much change there was going to be and that trying to find something that would always work is just not only a school's going to change, but I'm going to change. And when I put a lot of time into things that I assume I will use forever, then what it did was. It made me not want to innovate because it's like well, I don't want to do something a different way because I spent all these hours setting this other thing up and then that would make me bored. You know, I like new challenges and the creativity of teaching is a big draw for me. So if I'm doing the same thing year after year after year, I'm going to get really bored. And if I have invested too much time into the way that I've set things up, then I'm not going to want to do something differently. So that's where the non-attachment really comes in, where it's like this is all an experiment. Productivity is an experiment. How I run the classroom is an experiment. I'm always going to be trying new things.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't have to be exactly right. Every lesson, as you're saying, claire, doesn't have to be innovative. It doesn't have to be amazing. You know it's like if you think about, you know the meals that you create, not every dinner that you make is amazing, right, some are just they work. You know it's like it serves its purpose. You got the nutrition that you needed, you're full, that's it. It wasn't amazing. Other meals are spectacular and other meals are just really not that great.

Speaker 2:

And I feel like it's the same thing with lesson planning, like don't try to make every lesson, just hit it out of the park. Find things that work and reuse them over and over again. You know you can in. You can just make small tweaks to keep things fresh and interesting. But kids love to know that they have that predictability, that routine where they know how to be successful. They've done something similar before, they know what's coming and they can thrive in that kind of situation.

Speaker 2:

So don't feel like you always have to look for the next new thing. Always be trying to find something brand new and trying to find that thing that will work forever. Just invest your time in it. You know something that's always going to work for every class every year. I don't think that thing exists. It took me a long time to accept that, because I don't want to accept that, but that would be. My advice to myself is to stop trying to find this once and for all thing that is always going to work and just don't be so attached to what I'm doing. Be a little bit more playful with it. Take myself a little less seriously. Take students' responses to the lessons a little bit more playful with it. Take myself a little less seriously. Take students' responses to the lessons a little bit less seriously and just try to enjoy the process more, because it really is a lifelong experiment this whole process of teaching and learning.

Speaker 1:

It really really is, and it just made me think like so I've been teaching for 14 years and this year, or last year now 2024 I started my membership, the behavior club, and I started to create a lot of resources for teachers. I look back at the resources I was creating six months ago and I think, no, don't like him, and that was six months ago. And I've been teaching 14 years because we are constantly on a journey of reinventing our styles, ourself, our understanding around things, and you can't get attached to it and if you're not looking back and cringing, you're not growing. So don't feel like you're going to create something for the first time. You're going to love it forever.

Speaker 1:

So I just love that advice so much and I hope that a lot of my listeners who are in their first years have gotten so much from this conversation. I trust that they have, because you are just such a fountain of knowledge around this stuff. And, yeah, where were you 14 years ago, gosh? Finally, if anybody is listening and they would love to come into your sphere, what support do you offer for teachers and where can teachers go to find you?

Speaker 2:

So the best place to go is truthforteacherscom. So that's where you'll find lots of articles from current classroom teachers about what's working in their rooms. You'll find my podcast there, my books, the curriculum that I've created called Finding Flow that helps kids manage their time, energy and attention, and you can find out about the 40 hour teacher work week and all of the 40 hour AI resources there. So everything's at truthforteacherscom. And, of course, you can follow me on socials too.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, angela, and I'll obviously pop all of those links in the show notes so people can find you super easy. But thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast, angela. Thanks, claire.

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Claire English

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