The Power of Systems for Beating Teacher Burnout

Are you a teacher struggling to get out of teacher burnout? Long hours, demanding responsibilities, and the constant juggling act of managing a classroom can take a toll on even the most passionate educators. But what if there was a way to alleviate some of that stress and sustain your career in the long run? In this episode, Samantha Holcomb joins us as we chat all about the transformative power of teacher systems and how they can be your secret weapon in combating burnout while unlocking classroom success.

Supporting Teachers: How Systems Can Help Reduce Burnout and Enhance Success

Most teachers have a routine or two that they run in their classroom, but routines and systms are very different. Systems are what you need. By implementing strategic systems, you can regain control, streamline your workflow, and find more joy in teaching. In this episode, we explore four types of systems specifically designed to support teachers in reducing burnout, enhancing productivity, and fostering a sustainable career.

Sam Holcomb went from the world of engineering to high school science teacher, and it was hard! That first year of teaching she had a 2 year old and 2 month old with 7 middle school math and science preps to balance. Most weeks were completely stressed and sleep deprived until she made the connection that the engineering and lean efficiency systems from her "previous life" would be the tools to simplify the time and energy spent on seemingly endless to-do lists. Now in year 6, and having to learn 16 different courses to teach, shes determined to make sure everyone can implement simple systems to their classroom and home life!

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[0:01] Hi, Samantha, I am so excited to have you on the podcast and chat all things systems with you today.

It's my favorite thing to chat about. Yes, it's my love language.

So I gave like a brief introduction of who you are, but I would just love it if you would share a little bit about yourself.

Like, how did you go from being an engineer to a high school teacher and just the background behind all of it? Like, tell us everything.

So in high school, I was like the ultimate nerd. I was in eight bands my senior year.

I'm self-taught on seven instruments, I think. I was president of the science club, treasurer of the history club.

I was secretary of the math fleets.

I mean, I was super cool. And I fell in love with physics.

I thought it was like the neatest thing ever.

And I told my parents I wanted to be a physics teacher.

And my dad said, nope, not paying for you to go to school to be a teacher.

[1:03] So I went to school and I became an engineer, which was as close to teaching physics as I could probably get without actually doing it.

And then I ended up moving to a super tiny town after working in industry for a little, bit so that I could be closer to my long distance boyfriend.

And then we got married, built a house, had some kids, but there was very minimal engineering opportunity in this tiny little town. Now he did work for a family engineering firm, but like I could have never worked there, so I didn't want to.

So I finally decided it was time to pursue that like lifelong dream of going and being a physics teacher, and it took me five years to figure out how to effectively make that conversion because at the time it was not very easy.

Now I mean you can go get a teaching license almost anywhere pretty easy, but at the time it took me forever to figure it out. And I started at a small, tiny private school where they hired me knowing I had absolutely no background in teaching with seven different preps. And I had a planned period maybe three times a week. Oh, wow. And I taught two classes simultaneously in one class period of those seven preps. I had no clue what I was doing.

It was, it was not a...

[2:24] Not a highlight of my career, I would say, but I learned a lot. It was a crash course in everything that you could possibly do wrong your first year. I definitely went there and did it wrong.

[2:34] I finally kind of recovered and have since then fallen into high school instead of middle school, which is definitely more my jam. Props to all of the middle school teachers.

Lessons learned from a rough first year and finding the right fit

[2:47] I love middle school. The one year was plenty for me. I know. It's like you really find where you fit, it when you start teaching them, like you understand one or the other really well.

And I knew I couldn't do elementary.

I need to sass a little bit with my students and have that back and forth.

[3:07] But I pieced together after, well, in the middle actually of my really rough first year that I had such an intense training and background in all things, project management systems, main organization, my job was essentially to take a project for an engineering firm, and try to simplify it and make it as efficient and productive as possible for as little cost as possible.

[3:34] And I was doing none of that when it came to my classroom, but they fit together so well.

And so I have since been on this journey of trying to marry the systems world that comes from a more corporate environment and saying, teachers, we need to do this too.

Yes, I completely agree with you because I learned about systems when I started building businesses. Like I had a t-shirt business, I'm very, I love to get into things like that.

And I realized, oh crap, I'm not doing any of this in the classroom.

And really bringing that in there, because I'm obsessed with systems and automations, all of that stuff.

And I'm not like OCD systems, but I'm like a good system just puts me in a good mood.

You know what I'm saying?

So for those teachers who are like, all right, what the heck are systems?

How would you explain it to them?

What are systems and why are they important?

[4:36] And why do you think it's so important? Well, you're right. When it works, it's like magic.

And it is one of the best feelings in the world.

The way I try to simplify the idea of systems, because you can go really nerdy into it, is.

[4:51] People confuse systems and routines. Routine tells you what you're doing and when you're doing it.

Like you have a morning routine, you have an evening routine, you have a workout routine, you have like a step-by-step guide. But a system is going to take that routine and add purpose and goals behind it and give you the strategies to making that routine the best that it can be for the outcome that you want. So you're taking the routine with a goal, you're shifting your your mindset and you're adding whatever works best for you and like, manipulating it until they all come together and something that gives you that like, wow, magical moment.

Trash can rule and its application in the classroom

[5:28] Yeah, I love the way you explain that, too. Because I've talked about systems on the podcast, but not from the lens at which your, your expertise is in, you know what I mean? So you talk about the trash can rule. I got an I got to know, what exactly is that?

So, um, on Instagram a couple years ago, I mentioned this thing about trash cans and it became like my thing. I was the trash can lady for like a solid six months and I just embraced it and ran with it. Yeah.

[6:00] Um, I became really interested in college in lean Six Sigma systems, which is this process that they like have karate belt styles for it.

I took a course in college where I became a yellow belt in Lean Six Sigma systems.

You can go all the way to black belt and it's about making tweaks to a process that already exists so that you can save time and money for a company. And how much time and money you save determines the belt level that you're at. So my professor walked us through, she was a black belt, and she was walking us through the system tweak that made her a Six Sigma black belt.

And it was literally analyzing trash can locations within a factory and shifting them, six inches to one foot and it saved the factory, over a million dollars in lost downtime and materials in one year.

Oh wow. I know. So if you think about it in more of like the real world that we see, I think, Disney is like the best example. Disney is not a trashy place. They engineered it that way.

[7:08] Every 30 feet is another trash can. And the trash cans have this whole cool underground system so that they never technically fill up and it all empties out. But they make it- I had no idea. Oh yeah. It's really crazy to think about all the engineering that goes into that place. But they strategically do that because they want to make it so easy for you to throw your trash away that like you have to make a real concerted effort to try to trash Disney instead of just putting it in the trash can. And so I take that approach and in my classroom, one of the first things I'll do is I will look around and say, if I'm a student in this seat.

[7:45] What trash can am I going to? If I'm a student over here, what trash can am I going to? And And I do that with all the student supplies that they have access to.

So I have multiple pencil sharpeners around the room, but also even at home with my kids.

If I noticed that, for instance, we put all of their toys in the basement or in back in their room.

And then I noticed that like certain stuffed animals kept making their way to the living room and they never wanted to take them back.

Applying systems to manage stuffed animals at home

[8:11] So I can recognize that pattern and say, instead of fighting this and losing time and energy on that battle, I'm just gonna put a container for stuffed animals in the living room.

And when it gets full, then we deal with it. But until then, you need to recognize, what types of things are bothering you and what you're losing your own time and sanity and energy on and make adjustments because even the smallest little ones are going to have a huge impact.

[8:41] Gosh, the whole stuffed animal thing is kind of blowing my mind right now too because I'm, like, yeah, every day I have to tell my kids to pick up those same animals.

The one that has changed my life in the last two years, I saw somebody on Instagram say this and it blew my mind. I immediately told my husband we're doing this.

Genius Laundry Room Hack for Kids' Socks

[9:04] We don't keep our kids' socks in their rooms anymore. We put kids' socks in the laundry room, which is right next to the garage, so that as they're putting their shoes on in the laundry room, the socks are there.

Because- That's genius. How many times for little kids do you go back all the way to your room, go grab some socks.

They don't need socks in their room. It's just a hot mess. Instead, and I don't even match them anymore.

I pull them straight out of the dryer and throw them right into the basket, right across the room.

And we moved it to some place that was way more practical, saved us the time, energy and sanity, because now we weren't fighting the battle of who's gonna go back and get the socks so that they can put shoes on.

That is so genius. And now I'm gonna do that. Oh my gosh, I have found two big nuggets in this already.

And it has nothing to do with teaching but it has everything to do with systems. So that's genius.

Teacher Stress: Struggles and Strategies

[9:56] I know that a lot of teachers, like they struggle with the job creep.

Have you heard of that term before? Where it's like more and more is being piled on and on and on and just constantly having things just being added to their plates.

And I think that's one of the biggest struggles that I see. What are the biggest struggles you see in regards to teacher stress? And do you have anything like that you would say, this is what you should do to kind of help out with that.

And that is where 90% of the stress I'd say comes from, is we spend so much time trying to perfect all of the pieces that then we have no more time for the leftover pieces.

And we let all of it kind of roll over when instead if you follow almost any productivity person on the internet, they're going to tell you B work is great. Put B work out there.

If you have it together and you have an outline, put it out there. I used to try to make all these fancy worksheets and docs and format all of my Google forms for tests and make the background so pretty. And it was, it was great for me. Like it made me feel good, but it literally brought nothing to the content, which was my job. Right. And so if I looked at it, my job was to get them to understand, let's say like atomic structure, like know where a proton, neutron, and electron are.

And so I would just start typing things into docs and I would print it straight from there, no formatting whatsoever, let them take it and go with it because if I put all that extra time in, I was taking time away from another section of my life that I wanted to have for something else. And with that, it's, I mean, I will not be the first person that says that boundaries are important. But I think that one of the easiest ways to handle job creep is to focus on the job at work. And so I do a block system for a block schedule system for every single day that I'm at home, and I I decided to modify it for the school day.

Block System: Managing Time and Boundaries as a Teacher

And we don't have three-hour chunks at school, ever.

You might get three hours total in an entire day. But each chunk of time that you do have, you can focus on a task.

So for instance, I would get to school 15 minutes before students would be in my room because that's when my contract time was.

I had a block of prep the room, and it was literally pull everything up, make sure the the copies are straight.

That's all I needed to do and that's all I could get done in that time.

But then during my plan period, each day of the week was assigned a different task, whether it was prepping the next week, grading this prep, grading that prep, or maybe going ahead and sorting through some materials, getting lab stuff ready.

Every day had a different thing and a backup just in case I didn't have a lab coming up.

And so you can take the bigger chunks and the smaller chunks and say, For instance, lunch is my time for emails.

I don't respond to emails any other time of the day besides at lunch because it's just going to be a time suck.

You can get stuck in it forever. So if you're just smart about when you put your focus and telling yourself what your focus is, you can get so much more accomplished in that time that it doesn't have to creep out anywhere else.

I've been teaching special education for like 9 of the 13 years that I've been a teacher. And I had specific days where I would work on IEPs. That was my day for IEPs. This is my day for progress monitoring. This is my day. And they went into my specific blocks, my prep block, because I did, I mean, I had one a day. And I know you said earlier, like, you only had like 3 a week. But I had won a day, and I made sure that they had a theme for that day, because that made sense to me. And I knew what I was supposed to focus on and I wasn't going to get you know completely out of order, you know, just by all the things that I have to do.

So I really, I really like that you brought that up because that's a really cool way.

Like an extra little bonus of it is when something does come up, like let's say you get a stack of a ton of late work that students bring in, you can tell them, well, the next time I'm grading your class is next Wednesday.

Or if you have something that comes in where you need to help another teacher outline something, you can say, okay, well, my plan period when I work on course material is this day, so I'm going to put it into that bucket and, like, release it from my whole scattered brain of things that I need to get done because it doesn't have to go right now. I have a time set aside for that. Yes, and that's like setting the boundary for you. I love that. I love that so much. And you know, my love language is also templates. I love a good template. I can never think of what to write in an email. It just takes so much energy because I want it to be the perfect email. So templates for emails are like my favorite. But do you have any other templates that you like recommend for teachers to save time and save that energy?

I think actually I think it ended up being six. Six lesson templates that I think everybody should create before you even start planning out a unit. Templates are the only way that I could teach going into my sixth year, 16 different preps. So in year 15, I had taught 15 different courses. They all, I had to start pretty much all of them from scratch, figuring, out what to do and.

And I was tired of not being able to carry any of my work with me. So I created template assignments. And then they end up being my sub plans because they can go with any topic, any unit and just making things that I know if I'm going to want to do it more than once, making a worksheet that is not specific to the topic, but asks a really good overarching question that students can answer to prove their understanding. So for example, if I have a movie that they're going to watch. I don't have those fill in the blanks like follow along and tell me what number they said at this point or whatever. I ask them what are three things that you found interesting and one question you still have. Sketch a scene that you found really important from the video. Summarize the importance of the scientific data that was presented.

So if I'm going to just straight lecture, if I'm going to have group work time in between, I will have all those things laid out in a generic template that I can go and copy so that my slides are essentially fill in the blank for myself.

Like I can just put all my vocab on one slide, topic one, question one, topic two, question two, and follow through that way.

Creating Template Rubrics for Efficient Grading

Right. But if you're looking for, like, symbolism in a student-selected writing, then you can put, like, on this response, three points for putting symbolism or putting the major content into, like, usable format.

And having your punctuation, having your capitalizations and all the grammatical things.

And so creating that rough outline is going to also let you grade a lot faster.

Absolutely. Oh, gosh, I love a good template. I could, templates are my jam.

Yes. And you're one of the presenters at the Summer Self-Care Conference, and your presentation is going live on the very first day of the conference.

Can you talk a little bit about what you're going to be covering in your presentation so the teachers who are listening, they're going to be like, oh, my gosh, I want to hear more of what Samantha has to say. Can you tell them a little bit about what is in your session?

Yeah. So I am giving away the three simple steps and simple systems that you can implement so that you're maximizing your time and minimizing your effort every single day.

These are like, if I could tell you three things I wish you would implement before the school year started and even in your personal life, because I try not to make something.

It needs to really flow through everything so that you can take the biggest advantage of it. I am going through how I use templates in the classroom in my personal life.

And actually I cover more of the personal life in there because I think that that's one area that we all struggle with more than we would admit.

And then also covering SOPs, which is one of my favorite standard operating procedures are going to change your world if you haven't really started working on them.

And also diving a little bit deeper into block scheduling and how you can use that.

And I have freebies to go along with all of that tied to the conference.

Connecting with Samantha: Instagram, Podcast, Teachers Pay Teachers, Etsy

I am so excited about it because I know that so many teachers are going to get so much value from your presentation and so many of the others.

And I'm just so excited that it's on the first day of the conference.

So I am so excited that we had you here on the podcast and that you're doing your presentation for the Summer Self-Care Conference.

And I know so many teachers are going to get a lot out of all of this.

But in the meantime, can you share where they can find you, what you offer, how to connect with you further.

And then you can also find me on Teachers Pay Teachers, where I have a lot of those template worksheets that work not only for science, but also for any upper level discipline. And then I also have an Etsy shop, which is going to get a major update here really soon. So if you search.

Yeah. I am all over the place just trying to spread systems and some little nerdy science I love it. I love it. And we're gonna put all of the links for all of those things down in the show notes So everybody can go and grab and hang out with you Samantha. Thank you so much for being on the resilient teacher podcast It was such a pleasure to talk my love language with you.

Yeah, thanks for nerding out with me.