Circling Forward

I wrote last week about my intention to follow my boss's advice and focus my attention on my "must do" list for work in an effort to work fewer hours and have weekends off. And, I was able to do it this week. I got to school a bit earlier each day, but the main factors were having my must do list as well as shaking up my time management approach a little bit. I've been reading Timeboxing  by Marc Zao-Sanders, and it is helping me bring a lot more intentionality to my time. Each day either right before bed or first thing while the coffee is brewing I take about 15 minutes to go through my to-do list and calendar, decide what's most important, and make a plan for the day. A few things that have been great about this: Prioritization : I'm in relationship with the constraints of time, and it's helping me prioritize. I know I can't do it all, and taking the time to think about my priorities and goals (i.e. not working on the weekend) really helps me make mo...

This week at school was a bit of a ride emotionally. As I have been focusing more on maintaining routines and being consistent with our schedule, I'm finding that there is much more of a feeling of stability in the classroom, and I also got to a place where I was feeling some burnout and mounting frustration this week. Luckily, I was able to talk through the emotional side of it with my therapist and the tactical side of it with my manager and grade-level colleague, and that led to some productive shifts. First, what went well this week?  It has been helpful to set aside this time and space for weekly reflection. It's interesting to come back to what I wrote last week and see that the intentions I set largely came to pass. We are on a great trajectory with Growth Mindset and a process orientation. After practicing in math journals for a week, I'm seeing that students are much more focused on their mindset, math practices, and the actual math they are learning. I'm no l...

This felt like more of a typical week. We stuck with the schedule, and having those boundaries is really helpful at the moment; we are all starting to build some muscle memory around the routines for arrival, dismissal, independent reading, and word study. Aside from being consistent with the schedule, I also rolled out revised class jobs this week and had students complete a survey indicating interest and availability, and that has been going quite well. I was sure to choose arrival and dismissal captains who could really support with keeping the routines on track, and that has been a great help. Other things that went well this week: We are in the midst of a unit on Greek Mythology. It has been really fun, and students are getting a lot better at reading closely. Our summaries are starting to feel less like retells, they are getting better at determining theme and finding all the key details to support their theme, and we have been reflecting on who would be a good audience for an ad...

 Oh geez, this was a week. My husband and I went to a fantastic meditation workshop on Sunday all about "radiating metta," or lovingkindness. At the end of the day I was feeling very relaxed, and I was maybe even radiating some metta, when the teacher casually mentioned that we should look out because metta practice often also brings out its opposite as well. Monday hit me like a ton of bricks. My schedule is such that on Monday and Wednesday I get a 25 minute lunch break, and then my prep is last period at 2:00, and other than that I'm on with kids. I have a lot of preps on Tuesday and Thursday, so that makes up for it, but given the way my ADHD tends to operate and teaching a new grade level, I find that I get overwhelmed and overstimulated on Mondays. On this particular Monday, it felt amped up, and I was feeling a lot of agitation. On Tuesday and Wednesday we were giving the MAP test, so we were out of our routine, then Thursday I had meetings during all of my plannin...