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...

 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...

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...