Balance. Do you have it in your Teaching Day?

How many lunches have you skipped already this term?

Did you get 8 hours of sleep last night?

It’s so hard, isn’t it?

This episode is important!

SO important.

Teaching has a strange culture around it where lunch is a luxury, and we train ourselves to hold a wee for two hours (instead of just going to the bathroom), where we teach a 5 period day and then (because our to-do list didn’t include our ACTUAL job) we say “I’ve got nothing done today.”

and that’s not ok and it’s not healthy!

Teaching creates a never-ending to-do list.  It requires an awful lot of energy and, if we’re truly going to have the impact we want on those children we’re working with, it all starts with how we look after ourselves. 

"Person First, Teacher Second"
Ellen Ronalds Keene

In Episode 052, we are joined by Ellen Ronalds Keene of The Teacher Wellbeing podcast as she shares her top five tips for getting more balance in our teaching day.

Whether that be making sure that you know YOU and how to fill your bucket, tracking your hours so you SEE how much you’re actually doing or simply NOT accepting that lunch is a luxury, tune in to hear her talk about:

• Knowing yourself
• Maslow before Blooms
• Tracking your work hours – make work visible!
• The power of rituals
• Asking better questions 

Boundaries. We set them for the kids but what about for ourselves?

Have you ever limped towards the end of term wishing that you’d said “no” to that extra project, feeling guilty about how you’re missing valuable family time and feeling like your patience is running very thin… with everything? 

Me too!

Teaching is such an all-consuming job, isn’t it?  

The thing is… it’s not ok for it to actually consume ALL of our time.  

We need to set (and keep to) some boundaries about how we work.

It’s time to draw some lines in the sand… for ourselves!
We are not machines and we need to take time out!
This week we’re acknowledging the impact of neglecting ourselves.

Of NOT “leading ourselves well” and what that can mean for our students and their progress (never mind our own sanity)

It’s BAD my friend.  

BAD

It's time to move from overwhelmed and stress to calm, confident and ease!

In this week’s episode, we focus on how to create boundaries in your workplace so that you always have time for yourself, your family and the things that matter just as much (if not more) than your classroom.

We touch on

• Managing time (because it feels like there is NEVER enough of it
• What saying “yes” actually means for you (and your sanity)
• How to work out where you’re going to use your time
• The bonuses of being calm, confident and at ease.
• How, if you’re leading a bunch of young people, the least you can do is model being able to look after yourself!

Tune in right now to hear Selena share stories of her early bad practice around managing her enthusiasm and passion in teaching.  Learn from her mistakes and take on board the ideas and suggestions she has for you to avoid teacher burn out. 

"I'm struggling with keeping students on task. Some strategies for how to deal with that would be great!"

New school year.

New Term

New Kids

New Content

My goodness! SO much change already! 

We’re all in the middle of learning how to manage our new classrooms.  Whether that be establishing your rules or boundaries or working out how everyone ticks, Behaviour management will be on the lips of teachers up and down the country right now.

Let me share some Top Tips for Better Behaviour Management
This week I’m going to pull from my own experiences as a High School English teacher to share with you how I model and manage great behaviour for learning.

The standard (at Prof) tells us that we need to be about to show we can manage “challenging behaviour by establishing and negotiating clear expectations” (4.3) 

What does that mean and where does it start?

Well… we’re going to talk about:

• How it all starts with YOU and your attitude and style in your classroom
• How you need to acknowledge that you can not control the behaviour of your students (or anyone else for that matter)
• How looking after yourself properly will positively impact your students’ learning and behaviour
• The importance of being like Elsa and “let(ing) it go”
• High expectations, how to share them, define them and stick to them.

I’ll also share some real examples of how you can play with the words you choose to use to influence your students’ behaviours.

Remember your first day as a brand new educator?

Oh my goodness!

The excitement! The joy that you’re finally going to get to do what you’ve always wanted to do.

and…

then the realisation and that you’re finally going to be a REAL teacher…

and..

the overwhelm the fear, the panic.

It's a good job we've got 12 tips for new teachers right here!

I’m handing the mic over to our listeners and (oh my goodness you lot!) they have shared some gold!

Tune in to hear 12 tips from educators who have been there, done that and bought the t-shirt.

With advice on everything from behaviour management, parent relationships, well-being and more you don’t want to miss this episode. 

In fact, make sure that you share it with ALL of the new teachers at your site!

Massive thanks to all those who contributed! To Lisa, Melanie, Courtney, Paul, Tim, Peter, Karen, Alex, Henning, Luke, Amy and those who wished to remain anonymous, a MASSIVE thank you!  

Join Chantelle Love as she explains how she decided to leave the chairs in the centre of the room, stick nothing to the wall and let the students walk into a blank canvas.

We talk about the pressure and culture around classroom prep in the lead up to Term 1 and how bucking the trend and thinking outside the box made a huge difference to classroom culture for Chatelle’s students.

She’s even shared the teaching resources she used to help her kids design THEIR learning environment. 

Tune in for some awesome tips and a new perspective on your workload before the term starts. 

Those photos you just shared of your classroom are awesome. Is Instagram or Pinterest the only place they belong?
Have you been struggling to find some quality artefacts for your portfolio?  

Have you been taking photographs of your classroom as you set it up?

Usually, at this time of year, Instagram will begin to flood with images of classrooms  

Eager teachers from across Australia will be proudly printing, laminating, organising, moving furniture, checking out KMART classroom hacks and creating beautiful learning environments for their students to step into in week one.

The thing is,

that photo tells a story

and that story

Hits a heap of focus areas…
Those insta worthy classroom shots are amazing artefacts for your teacher portfolio
This week I want to open your eyes to how much professional skill it takes to set up a classroom.  We talk about:

How you make choices based on pedagogical strategies you’re going to try
How you’ll keep changing things as you learn more about your students
How the photos you take can be complemented with CARE or STAR statements about WHY you’ve chosen that layout or look
What research backups your choices and how you can use it to support your ideas 
and more…

Tune in to go from Instagram influencer to evidence creating genius in just a few quick steps.

OOH and grab the freebie below to grab the workbook that accompanies this episode! Head to edufolios.org/047

2020 is here!
What does the data sat in Edufolios, reveal to us about Education in Australia?

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, teaching and learning continues to undergo transformation and change.   As we learn and grow with our students, working to increase the impact we can have every day, Edufolios has been busy helping you to make sense of it all.  What does the data that data reveal about education in Australia and teachers’ priorities for 2020?
What do the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers help reveal about us as a profession?

In this podcast episode you will learn what the data tells us about:

• Our focus over the last few years
• What is changing and developing and coming out as the most important thing to teachers right now?
• How our priorities change and grow as we move through the career stages.

and

perhaps most importantly,

• What can we learn from this journey in data to guide us into a powerful new decade for education in Australia?

Before we switch off completely, we need to make sure that we own 2020 by setting ourselves an achievable goal for Term 1.  If you're ready to make a plan, be proud of it and then PUT IT DOWN and rest for a while then tune in to find out how. 

It's the last week of term... Nearly Time to relax
But can you switch off?

We’re nearing the time where teachers everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief.   Christmas concerts are over and the children are back with their parents for the holidays.  Now it’s your time to relax.

But you don’t seem to be able to switch off

You need a cup of tea at 10:20, 12:30 and 3:15 (because that’s what you’ve been doing all year) and you’re still thinking like a teacher… even if you’re planning for Christmas.

Something’s missing…

You forgot to take stoke of 2019, learn lessons and move on

Using the wisdom I have learnt from James Wedmore I am going to share, with you, some ways in which you can send a clear signal to your brain that it’s time to let go and relax.

Download the workbook at that accompanies this episode at Edufolios.org/044 and join with me as we:

explore the lessons we learnt from 2019
Let go of any negative feelings
Find the things we need to celebrate and
Make a plan to celebrate them really well!

All in the name of being fully prepared to relax this summer! 

There used to be a time when having a portfolio was all you needed to stand out from a crowd.  That's not the case any more is it. It feels like everyone has one these days.  That makes things more complicated.  How can you stand out from the crowd? In this episode, I'm sharing 5 top tips to help you stand out from the crowd.  There's even a freebie to take you through it step by step.  Head to edufolios.org/043 to grab it