1. No matter what planner I’ve had or lesson planning system I’ve used, I have always felt that the big tasks, the big projects I was working on as a teacher - like planning a unit, creating an assessment, planning out review and remediation, etc. - I always felt that no matter the lists I made to know what needed accomplished it just felt like I was barely keeping my head above water to get it all created and done in time.
1. Now, with Asana in my business, which absolutely applies to lesson planning and creation, then implementation in the classroom, I’m able to see when something I’m creating needs to be absolutely finished, and plan backwards, seeing where I have time available and when I’m able to work on it, and when I need to have certain aspects done in order to keep the train moving, but in ways that I’m not always thinking about only it.
2. In the classroom, if I ever wanted to implement something new and it required my creating and planning...

Quick question for you… when you were in college as a pre-service teacher, making your preparations to become a teacher, taking all your education classes, did you ever take a class on how to lecture?

Me neither.

Another question, when you were assigned to make plans for an entire unit, like a curriculum map for a unit in one of those college classes, did you plan to lecture in class 80%+ of the time and say that out loud to your class?

Yeah, me neither.

That’s because as a pre-service teacher you were being trained on how to best help your students through the learning process, you spent thousands of dollars on your education to become the expert on the learning process, and now that you are actively in the classroom, let’s face it… you’re an overpaid lecturer if that’s all you do.

Oh man.  I may have just ticked off a lot of people, but let me explain real fast.

I don’t believe lecturing is bad.  Seriously, I don’t. ...

Welcome back to the Sustainable Teacher Podcast, or welcome for the first time if this is the first episode of the show that you’re listening to.  Either way, I’m so happy to have you listening in.  And I’m going to start off by saying that this episode will be a healthy dose of tough love.

I have all the love for my people - and my people are teachers.  They are educators through and through, and I love them.  But I also have tough love for you today. And I’ll say that a dose of tough love might not be exactly what you want today. Heck, it might not be what you need, because you really need an open ear to vent to.  And that’s healthy as well, but unfortunately, on this platform I can’t be that listening ear, so I encourage you to go and find it.  We have our Sustainable Teacher Podcast private community on Facebook that you are welcome to join and find a safe place to vent and express your concerns.  Be sure to...

 I recently was driving in the car sans children so it was very peaceful and serene.  Not to say my time in the car with my three boys isn’t wonderful - it’s just a louder version of wonderful where I don’t get to sit in quiet or do what I ended up doing on this particular drive which is downloading a book that I forgot I had waiting for me on Audible and click play.

I’m going to recommend this particular book to you in this episode so I will talk more about it later, but for now I need to share how the book struck me in a way I was not anticipating.

So I’m driving along and I’m listening in as the author tells a story and brings wisdom to something I had been feeling for most of my life, and she gave such clarity I didn’t know I needed.  I was even brought to tears - not tears of sorrow necessarily but tears of feeling seen in what I thought was just all in my head.

And the book, so aptly named, is Jennie Allen’s Get...

Hey there teacher-friend and welcome back to the Sustainable Teacher Podcast, I’m so glad you’ve chosen to join us today, and man have you picked a good episode to land on.  I am so excited to have Trevor Muir on the podcast today.

Trevor’s roots are as a high school English teacher, and is now teacher, author, and speaker. He is the author of the books The Epic Classroom and The Collaborative Classroom. Trevor is a teacher at Grand Valley State University, was a national faculty member for the Buck Institute for Education, and is one of the Andrew Gomez Dream Foundation speakers. His work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Edutopia, EdWeek, and WeAreTeachers. He gave a TED Talk titled, "School Should Take Place in the Real World," at TEDxSanAntonio. Trevor’s Facebook page, The Epic Classroom, has inspiring videos that have been viewed over 30 million times. At the heart of Trevor’s work is the conviction that every student has the...

You know the age old tale of what it’s like to be a first, second or even third year teacher and all the hustle and grind that it is.  You get to work before 6 AM and you leave sometime after five or 6 PM and probably still have more papers to grade or lessons to plan once you get home and a lot to do on the weekends. And that’s just to keep your head above water.

As if those first years of teaching aren’t bad enough it’s as if the universe looked at me and said just wait. At the start of my fourth year of teaching I became a mother and everything changed.

Suddenly what had been my absolute top priority, which was teaching even above my marriage, sad to say it but true because I’m such a workhorse and so professionally focused, but motherhood shook the bedrock, if you will, of my priorities. And I had no clue how to deal with that when my identity had been so wrapped up in who I was as a teacher. 

And that is where this episode comes into...

Welcome back to the Sustainable Teacher Podcast, I’m so excited you are joining us today and want to remind you that if you’re loving the podcast and all that we offer here on this platform, it would help us out a ton if you could rate and review the podcast.  It’s really easy to do right on the podcast app where you’re listening from, will take just a few seconds, and will ultimately help us reach more teachers with our message of sustainability.

Ok, let’s talk about today’s episode shall we.

Today I am sharing with you three things that I am reevaluating during this back to school season.  We teachers are lucky in that we really have two times throughout the year where we get a fresh start.  At the new year that is the calendar year, and at the new year that is the school year.

And so I am taking this opportunity to make sure that all systems are a go, and that there’s not anything that’s dragging us down as we each...

Hi teacher-friend, I am Mandy Rice, if you don’t know me, I am the host of this podcast that I hope you’ve come to enjoy on your commute or maybe are brand-new to, and I’m glad you’re here to hear me out on this episode.  So, like I said, Hi, I’m Mandy, and I am control freak.  I am also a work horse, and am productivity obsessed.

Now, I’m sharing these things about myself because maybe you can relate, especially in your career and daily teacher-life, but also because I want you to know that as much as I preach streamline, reduce, fight for your own sustainability, I want you to know that when I say  these things, I’m also speaking directly to myself.

Working for your own sustainability is a journey, not a destination.  Meaning we will never arrive at one place where we look around and realize, “Ok, yes, my daily life is sustainable now.”  I don’t know, maybe we will, but I for sure know that...

Today on the Sustainable Teacher Podcast I am excited to welcome Kelly Jackson of Thesimplyorganizedteacher.com so we can chat about something that many of you have resolved to accomplish in 2021.  Many teachers who have participated in our Sustainable Teacher Challenge where we all are challenged to find ways to make our daily teaching lives a bit more manageable, actually set goals around becoming more organized.  Whether you set those kinds of goals or have an interest in getting all things teacher-life a bit more organized, then this episode is for you.

Kelly is a former teacher of little turned Classroom Organization Coach.  She helps busy and overwhelmed teachers create organized, safe, and well-managed classrooms that facilitate effective learning for their students and more time for themselves. She is a Texas girl currently living in Germany. Kelly runs The Simply Organized Teacher, hosts the Simply Teach podcast, and is the creator of The Organized Teacher...

At the time that this post will publish we are a day out from a well deserved break as we approach Thanksgiving.  Five days of no virtual or in-person school, no students to manage or lessons to plan.

And yet, many of us are looking at working at least one full day of break, if not most of the break.  We just have so much to catch up on, and, if we're honest, 5 days of a break is a good amount of time to get a head start on planning for the future so it's not so overwhelming when we're back in the classroom.

The truth is, as teachers, we can justify working until the cows come home.  We are doing important work not for the improvement of ourselves, but for that of our students.  And if we can make their education a well organized and well orchestrated experience then we are doing something right in the world.

For this reason, this week and in a few coming weeks we'll be focusing on the Teacher Health Series that we published earlier in the year, way back before...