Creating a Productive Work Schedule | The Lettered Classroom

about a month into school and what that means is that I can finally breathe I can finally feel like I am getting a handle of everything that's happening here inside of my classroom and I know you are feeling the exact same way so in this video what we're gonna specifically look at is how you can better help to create a system that will allow you to be your most productive at any given point during the day so that you are not taking home all of that extra school work you can enjoy your family you can enjoy kids if you have kids or your dog if you have a dog my little Walter and give back to yourself in the afternoon so you're getting going now let's make sure that you are the absolute most productive during the school day let's do it Bobby please that means [Music] so I'm sitting here and I'm editing this video and I realized that I wanted to create a resource for all of you so that as I'm working through creating my daily my weekly and my monthly schedule in order for me to be the most productive and efficient with my time and my day I wanted you guys to have something to be able to write and kind of go along with me as I am talking everything out in planning this so make sure that you go down into the description box click that link to be able to download your free resource and then that way as I'm talking through it and planning it out you all can be doing the exact same thing so that you can start your week tomorrow right on it like johnny-on-the-spot so download that free resource guys and I will catch you all next time bye so we all have those routines that we try to stick to on a regular day to day basis but what I find is that even though I know that in the back of my head this is a routine this is something that I need to do every single day a lot of the times those days that I tend to feel a little bit more flustered which that happens quite a bit for me I'm not gonna lie days that I feel flustered overwhelmed days where I'm just plain running late that happened to me this week where I forget to put my alarm on and then it's like oh my gosh what am I supposed to be doing as soon as you step out of your typical everyday routine by just a little bit you start to feel overwhelmed and so to help you not feel overwhelmed to help yourself be productive and to be able to get all of that done and to have a really good day a positive good day with your students and making sure that you're making the absolute most of it you have to take a time take time to be able to truly write it all out like sit down spend a good 30 minutes to an hour asking yourself what is it that I do every single day what is it that I have to do every single week or even monthly so that's what we're gonna do in this video guys I'm going to kind of walk you through my own a daily weekly monthly type plan I am NOT gonna lie hold on I I went through my wolf I went through my um I'm not gonna lie guys that I ended up going through my kindergarten stuff the other day because I was like wait a second I've been doing this for years like and I have like this was my old school kindergarten blick lesson plan binder do you guys remember this thing like look hold on how many of you remember this oh my god it has lesson plans in there it has everything I hoard it I don't know why but I do it's for videos like this this is why I hoard things everybody let's make sure we tell my husband that um but I have been doing this for years and years creating a schedule for myself creating a map of what it is that I am supposed to be doing on a regular basis these are my constants these are the things that don't change meetings here and there those are variables they come they go but what are your constants what are the things that you absolutely know you have to get done every single day don't just keep it in the back of your brain try to make sure that you're writing it out that you're really thinking it all through because those days that you start to feel super duper overwhelmed you can just pull that little paper out or you can open up your iPad and you have everything there that you need to get done so that you feel less stressed it is like it is the simplest thing I'm telling y'all right now simplest thing but it will make such an incredible impact on you your family life how much work you take home and your productivity at school okay i rambled a little bit so now we're gonna get into the drawing and mapping everything [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so we wanted to give a little bit of an update it is my lunchtime and typically for my lunchtime I will always grab my computer or my iPad or maybe both I will grab my lunch and I walk over into my partner's room where all three of us will meet together we eat lunch we talk about something that's upcoming we kind of work do like a work lunch type situation it works really well for us for our schedule and just gives us time together but without also losing any time so I have to upload a couple of discussion boards for today so I'm going to take my iPad with my laptop with me and I'm gonna eat my lunch and I'm super hungry so it's a really good thing okay so I mentioned to you guys that starting way back in kindergarten I started using this process of almost just mind mapping why do my days my weeks my months would look like to really gain a better understanding of what is it that I need to accomplish at any given point and what this really helps with like I said is during those days that you're the absolute most frustrated or flustered or something is going on or you need someone else to do this so this might be even really good information to have like let's say you end up getting sick for about a week you can leave this information out for a substitute so that they can at least keep things moving and going or for teacher partners if you have a teacher partner it's a great communication tool to others so that they can just kind of pick up where you left off but it's also something that's really gonna benefit you in the long run I cannot tell you how many times I feel like I've used this especially when I'm just not with it and I come in and we I feel like we've all had those days and I know you've had this day as well where you come in and you absolutely just you're like what am I supposed to be doing what was going on here what do I need to start like where do I start and this is definitely gonna help you in that area so I recommend spending about 30 minutes to an hour really kind of digesting this and really draining it all out now I'm not gonna do my whole shebang here maybe I'll end up doing an Instagram post a little bit later on sharing what my entire mind map looks like but I have to get home to my kids so I don't want to spend the entire time trying to do this on camera and then this video would be really long and y'all would be bored so I am gonna show you just the basics the general and just like the general points that I want to hit and then follow me on Instagram the letter classroom and I'll show you guys my my end of the results what does it look like so you can see all of the little bits and pieces that I haven't playing okay so I'm gonna like to do this as like a lesson so there there's a few different parts that you want to look at so one you're gonna look at daily items and I hope you guys can hear me so you're gonna have daily items you're also gonna have weekly items and then finally you're gonna have monthly items and of course this is gonna look different for everyone so you need to have like a trimester or if you want to do it by nine weeks or something to help you stay a little bit more organized you can absolutely break it even further than this but this is just one way to be able to create your little map so what I do is from my daily I then break it into a.m. and then I break it into p.m. so these are the things that I want to on a daily basis accomplish in the morning so I'm going to do all of the little details guys so it's like turn on lights pull out pull folder and this is the if you've watched my 43 folder system that's the folder that I'm referring to so it has all of my materials that I need for that day any type of books or any graphic organizers that I'm going to be using are printed and ready to go inside of there so I would pull that folder out and have it ready now the reason why I don't do it in my p.m. time is because they clean our tables so it's like my kids clean and then they clean so they clean off our tables and desks surface areas and I don't want anything on there just so that I can make sure that I'd get a nice little double dosage of clean in my class pulling my folder is gonna be another one and I'm kind of thinking through a few things I check emails and I do this at several points in the day but those are gonna be my big ones because let's just be honest there are times where it's like you're really busy and you don't have time to like check those emails so I'm gonna put check email in the afternoon as well so as soon as the kids are gone I like to sit down quickly check through my emails before I start cleaning up and packing up to leave now sometimes I can be really good and if I am really good and on top of my game I can get that done during special and then I don't have to worry about it into the next day which is really nice that's only if I'm on my game then I can go in to turn off lights right we want to have those turned off turn off lights I'm gonna check through their jobs and I typically do this like as the kids are there but I do like to check jobs I like to make sure that all the jobs are finished and accomplished but usually I'm walking around I just make like one more run through to make sure that there's nothing there p.m. any type of grades that I can get done if they can get them done quickly I will do them during the afternoon time because I really want to make sure that if they're kids that I need to come back and reteach certain points too I'm able to do that so I try to make sure that I have those grades completed in the afternoon let's see some other items that I do am I also like to make sure that my office folder is ready to go and that just sits up in the front ready just to have it checked off I also need to make sure I have any behavior cards that I've checked off as well and I'm gonna do both in the morning and then I do it in the afternoon so I look for parent signatures in the morning and then in the afternoon I give them any rewards if they have rewards that go along with their their cards so behavior cards are there I also like to make sure that my desk is clear so desk is clear you can see why you would really want to have a bigger space than what I'm allowing myself which is probably not the best I think I'm gonna take my weekly and just put it down here there we go that's a little bit better cuz I had and give myself a lot of space there guys so some of the other things that I really want to make sure I get done are going to be my planning so I need to make sure that my plans are ready to go this is done on a weekly basis not necessarily on a daily for me so just depending I know when I have the time to be able to do it that's when I'm gonna try to get my lesson planning done any materials that I need to pull I pull materials weekly I make copies weekly I may have things graded but I may not enter my grades daily but I will enter them weekly so by Friday I absolutely want to make sure that I have some of those grades entered in some things that I do monthly I know I'm kind of bouncing back and forth but this is why I want you to give yourself a lot of time because when you allow yourself to have like the 30 minutes to an hour you're gonna find that you're gonna be like oh yeah I forgot about this and I need to go back and add it and this is like a working document right like as you go on through the day you might start to find oh there are certain things that I really need to make sure that I'm doing that I forgot to add there and add in there in the first place this is one of those it doesn't really stop you can always come back always make adjustments change things up if you find that it's not really working for you this is just stuff that I have found works really really well for me so something I do monthly is I will check the faculty calendar so I go through and I will update my next month's calendar so we're like getting at the end of September and I've already sat down and I looked at the next month for October put any special dates that I needed to put in for October I put in faculty meetings later meetings that I might have any days that I have to take off to go to other district meetings so all of that's kind of logged in at that time another thing that I will absolutely try to make sure that I'm doing as well is I try to sit down and really look at my I call my curriculum maps and really what this is is this isn't something that's given to me by the district but what I do is I take the standards in specific units and then I map it out by lessons because there is a very natural progression when you're giving instruction you guys know that and so what I do is instead of creating like daily lesson plans which my lesson plans are pretty bare minimum it's not super detailed because this is my detailed piece here I will break them down and say lesson one here's what this is going to here are the materials that I can pull for it lesson two so on and so forth I can even like give you a little so it goes into something like this and I keep all of my lessons that I want to break down and I have them all kind of written out so that allows me to be able to quickly have like just a very clear snapshot of the progression that it should look like to go through that unit I already have my end in mind done so I know exactly where I need to be going with my kids always taking more time when I need to take more time but that's where I try to look at monthly it's going back and reassessing some of my curriculum maps monthly is something that we're doing snoot is we're gonna start our newsletter and we don't do this weekly because we don't really have a time to give out weekly so it's just best for us to do it as a monthly thing especially for upper elementary and when you're like customizing everybody's learning experience it's hard to say oh we all worked on this because everybody's kind of in different areas so that's a really difficult piece and what I just want to make sure that I have some general dates given out to families something else that I like to do weekly is make sure that I have a zero inbox this is something that I want to make sure that I've gone through and answered all my emails by the end of the week so when I start the week brand-new my inbox is completely empty and I know that everything's been taken care of when it needs to be taken care of and that also brings to mind that the PM I want to check my inbox and not necessarily my emails but my paper inbox that's in this little file cabinet right behind me and that's where I shove any papers during the day that I don't want hanging around my table and so then I will just quickly go through them put them file them where I need to file them and so I don't have stuff everywhere and I have everything in a very clean space I have learned that as a teacher I have to have things neat and tidy and organized or else I don't function so this really helps me and making sure that I'm functioning well let's see um I put copies I pulled materials I don't believe I have anything else as of right now now I could totally come back and I'm probably will come back and reassess them in this but once you have this piece done this daily piece right here the things that you're doing this could even be broken down into like a Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday sequence right so I want you to think about like what are the things that you want to do on Mondays what are the things that you want to have on Tuesdays that are specific to that particular day so this is daily am/pm but then you can start pulling some of these materials and pulling them here so I guess it would really be weekly like let's say Monday for me is just making sure I'm checking all materials right I'm going through all of my 43 folders and I'm checking through all of my materials actually that's on Friday I don't do that on Monday I do that on Friday because I want to be prepared for the next week so check all materials on Thursday is usually when I make any copies that I need to make and then this is where I will break down to some of my planning so let's say on Monday I might look to start planning a little bit more into math and looking into what are the progressions that the kids are going to use for the next week I can go ahead and start putting them into those days in my 43 folder system and then Tuesday I might say oh I'm gonna go ahead and start planning for reading and then Wednesday I'm gonna plan for my content time and I guess this would be instead of reading I might do it as ela okay so that way I'm not trying to sit down and plan all of it in one chunk I'm using my planning time appropriately and I'm trying to get those materials done when I do this y'all it really really helps me it helps me stick to a very like I'm gonna get these things done so that when I go home I don't have to stress about it I'm prepared for the next week and I get to spend time with my kids in my family which is what's really really important so that's kind of the general idea you could type this up you can print it out I highly recommend printing it out in the past I've always just kind of created a little spot like in my journal anything that you want to do to be able just to be able to reference pull it out and be consistent with it if you guys end up kind of doing all of this and you say Bridget it's not working for me my thing that I'm going to then ask you after that is are you opening it up on a daily basis are you really using it because a lot of the time what people say especially with planners is that they can't get into the planners this is a new habit that you're forming for me so you have to be consistent you have to take it out and you have to use it so I recommend having this out have it laminated whatever you want to do print it out on a like daily basis if you want to print it out on daily basis keep it open so you can use it check things off as you go along because this will end up helping you and it'll keep you productive and work focused which is like the best so that is kind of my mind map this is my way of being able to organize myself I hope that you guys found this somewhat helpful I am gonna go ahead now and finish cleaning up my little area so that I can head home and be with my kids I'll be prepared for the next day and I'm gonna use my pen time and I'm gonna get some of the stuff done which is gonna feel really really good [Music] so as I came over here to be able to turn my light off and get ready to leave for the evening I realize I need to add something to my p.m. list I want to go ahead and have my Keurig set up and ready to go for the morning that way when I come in the mornings and I'm turning on my light and I'm kind of going around I just go in a little circular motion it's really interesting how I do this to have it but I will flip these lights on and would just be really nice to just pop this down and hit to be able to have my coffee first thing because it just really relaxes me and it gets me ready for the day so I'm definitely adding setting up my Keurig for the next day so I can have my coffee ready [Music] [Music] so that is it guys that is the rest of this video I definitely know already have in the back of my head a couple of things I need to add along with the Keurig I also want to make sure that I am doing my morning message in the morning and that's typically something I do in the morning because like I said I like to have everything clean they're gonna clean my whiteboards for me and they do that in the evenings so I just waited till the morning to be able to do my morning message if I decide to do it on the whiteboard I've been playing with going back and forth between and having it on the whiteboard or if I just want to put it up on my Apple TV but it's been a little bit of us in curl lately so I've been putting it up on my whiteboard anyways I hope that you guys found this video a little bit helpful to get you to think through the entire process of just being able to make your time most productive now that you've gotten into the groove of school you're back at it you're not feeling as stressed anymore you can really start thinking a little bit more mindfully of how are you spending your time while you're there at school and how can you make it the most productive and also how can you help yourself out when you're feeling flustered or frustrated or just having those days where you're in a funk y'all I have had plenty of those days where I'm in a funk and I know you have too so let's help each other out let's help ourselves out and really make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success every single day by creating this little map this to-do of what is it that you need to get done especially for those days where you feel in and you come in and you're like a chicken with your head cut off you have no idea where to go or what to do first so I hope that you found this helpful I will definitely be posting a picture of my completed one up in Instagram on Instagram later on in the week so be looking out for it on Instagram cuz it'll be there thank you so much again for watching make sure to give the video a thumbs up hit that little bell for notifications for every time I decide to put up a video which is usually on Sundays and I'm also doing a live chat on Wednesdays at 7:30 Eastern so 7:30 p.m. Eastern but yeah thank you subscribe if you haven't already subscribe welcome to the Leonard classroom good to have you here hope you guys are having a really great weekend I will see you all next time bye

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 9,348

Rating: 4.9211268 out of 5

Keywords: teacher tips, The Lettered Classroom, classroom decor, first year teacher, classroom setup, classroom organization, a day in the life of a teacher, elementary teacher, middle school teacher, education, how to be a teacher, how to teach, new teacher, teacher youtuber, teacher vlog, weekly teacher vlog, classroom ideas, classroom inspirations, teacher organization, upper elementary teacher, teacher life

Id: 8L0Ee1bBSqg

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 29 2019