94. A Great Day Before School Even Starts: Your Perfect Teacher Morning Routine at School

Emily

Hey there, thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're talking about ways to make your teacher morning routine at school more productive. And we have a teacher approved tip for getting in a little more planning time in your day.

Heidi

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week's morning message is what do you do in the morning before students arrive to set the day up for success?

Emily

And we have some awesome responses from our community. Teresa says open everything on my computer that I need to teach for the day so I can use my smart board. Then open windows and turn on fans also fun. Double check all copies are made.

Emily

Stephanie said make it to do list. Very smart. Finish adding to anecdotal records and paperwork I can't get done with students around and finish my coffee and eat breakfast. Kristen says drink my coffee with calming music and set my intentions for the day.

Heidi

That sounds very peaceful.

Emily

Yes, that's probably a great way to start your day. Katie says double check that my stations are set up and ready to go. Open any web pages for teaching, calming music, cup of tea, greet the students and parents as they arrive. Natalie says I organize my desk get my papers ready for the day check emails and play my positive feels playlist until I start morning duty.

Heidi

Oh morning duties a rough one.

Emily

Yes, but a good playlist can help a lot. Tim says write my morning message get materials ready for the day open webpages and anything else that helps to make transitions go smoothly.

Heidi

So smart to think about those transitions ahead of time.

Emily

And Angela says I pass out all the work for the day placed in a basket for each pod in the order we'll use it and open all the lessons websites etc. I need. It eliminates a lot of off task behavior and downtime.

Heidi

I love that I had never thought of passing out all the day's papers ahead of time never. So you have a little basket of each table. And then you can just pass them all out in the morning.

Emily

Yeah, as long as you have a method to keep that organized, I think that's brilliant. Gary says I make sure everything is set for the following day before I leave, so that all I have to do is turn on my computer and smartboard. I don't want to rush around at the last minute.

Heidi

I think that's the dream.

Emily

Yeah, that is that's living right way to go Gary. And PJ very relatedly said, I struggle here because I'm always rushing to get to the gym to start the day. I feel like I started the day behind. I have my own kids to get to school and I'm not a morning person. But I do have a math worksheet to give out as students are making lunch choices and preparing for math.

Emily

We get it mornings can be so hard. So hopefully some of the tips in this episode will help those of you who are feeling like PJ. So let's get right into the content today.

Heidi

We are back today to talk more about the wonderful world of morning routines.

Emily

And as a teacher, you really have three morning routines to manage, you have the morning routine that gets you up and going. You have your teacher morning routine of what you do at school before your students arrive. And then you have a routine for your students to follow to start the day.

Heidi

Last week, we shared 10 tips for creating that morning routine that gets you out the door. If you missed it, make sure to go back and listen to episode 93.

Emily

So in today's episode, we're diving into that second morning routine. What do you do at school for your teacher morning routine before the students arrive?

Heidi

So to start with, I have to be honest about what my teacher morning routine looked like.

Emily

Okay, we're nothing if not honest here.

Heidi

It was routine in the sense that I did do it every day. But it wasn't anything that I would recommend copying. I'd come into my classroom turn on the computer and then I would just decide which fire needed to be put out first.

Heidi

Did I have a bigger deadline to plan a lesson or make copies or tidy my room or respond to a parent email? I triaged my way through the morning by hopping from my most urgent tasks to my less urgent tasks. And I just thought that's what you did.

Emily

Honestly, it is probably what most people do.

Heidi

It never occurred to me that there was something else I could do that I could take control of my tasks instead of letting my tasks control me. And even when we were teaching preschool, I didn't have a specific process in the morning. It boiled down to doing whatever was necessary for me to feel like I had a handle on the chaos that was about to walk through the door. But I handled it so haphazardly. I was left feeling chaotic, even if the kids weren't being chaotic.

Emily

Right. And for me, I think one of the big roadblocks to a successful teacher morning routine was that I usually plan too much to do in the morning before students arrived. I tell myself, I'll just do that in the morning when I wanted to leave after school.

Emily

And then surprise, I wouldn't have enough time to do all that I needed to do. Or there'd be a line in the copy room, which was a frequent problem at my school, or some other thing would disrupt my plans. And then I'd be starting the day flustered instead of prepared. So that is far from an ideal morning routine to start your day.

Heidi

Yeah, so we are definitely not the experts at this. But as Emily and I have been talking about this problem, we have come up with some steps that might help you and us change our mornings from frantically hustling to get everything ready to intentionally opening the doorway to a productive and peaceful day.

Emily

As we mentioned in last week's episode, we want routines that serve us not the other way around. When we rely on default routines, we're probably wasting a lot of time, energy and resources. So let's kick default routines to the curb and start building some intentional routines.

Heidi

And if you haven't listened to last week's episode, definitely check that out, because a lot of those tips will apply to your teacher morning routine as well.

Heidi

And for our discussion today, we're defining a routine as a sequence of events that happen at a particular time for a particular purpose. So your morning teacher routine likely has the purpose of getting yourself and your materials ready for the day ahead.

Emily

And in order to meet that purpose effectively, you need to know what steps are required to get everything ready. So we recommend starting with a clear understanding of what has to happen in your classroom each morning. Think about everything that you do from the time you unlock your door until it's time to start teaching and then start writing it down.

Heidi

So you've got to turn on your computer, open all the tabs that you need for the day, you have to check your email, check your calendar and your plan book, you may have pencils to sharpen, copies to make, papers to grade, just write it all down.

Emily

If you're already back in school, it may be helpful to keep this list going for a few days. For example, maybe you have grade level science rotations on Tuesday and Thursday. So you find that most of your Tuesday and Thursday mornings are taken up with prepping materials for science experiments.

Emily

But if you make your list on Wednesday, you might forget that you have to do that twice a week. Spending a few mornings listing your tasks can help you pinpoint details you might otherwise overlook.

Heidi

And once you have a list of tasks you do in the morning, the first thing you need to do is give yourself a pat on the back because dang you do a lot.

Emily

It's true. You're all doing so much, you definitely deserve a raise.

Heidi

Well, unfortunately, we can't give you a raise in pay. But we can give you the next best thing. Two thumbs up.

Emily

Yeah, well done except this as a podcast. So they can't see that.

Heidi

Well just know in your heart that we've got two thumbs up for your general awesome.

Emily

But I'll do it too. Now four thumbs up.

Heidi

And if you think of thumbs up as the next best thing to a pay raise, you are cut out to work in the district.

Emily

But back to our to do lists. Once you've got your list of tasks that have to be done, you need to decide when they should be done. A productive morning is largely dependent on what you get done after school the previous day. And what you get done after school is largely dependent on what you get done during planning time.

Heidi

So the effectiveness of our mornings is largely determined before we even leave school the day before. If we don't want to spend time and energy tidying our room in the morning, we have to make sure we do after school or during planning time or some other dedicated time.

Emily

Or maybe you love tidying your room in the morning because it doesn't take much brainpower and you have more energy than you have brainpower in the morning.

Heidi

When we're figuring out which tasks we want in our teacher morning routine, we have to consider the cost of each task in terms of the time, energy and resources it takes to complete it.

Heidi

If I need to bring my math scores to tomorrow's collaboration, I have to consider the time it will take, the energy it will demand and the resources that will be used. Maybe the grading program my school uses is slow after school because everyone is on it at once. That means it's a waste of time to try running reports in the afternoon. But maybe I don't have the energy to deal with it in the morning. And that leaves planning time or maybe lunchtime to get my data ready before collaboration.

Emily

In that case, you'd want to make sure to move your collaboration prep to a planning time routine. It's also interconnected and if you run on autopilot, you are likely wasting a lot of time, energy and resources.

Heidi

So as you're examining your list of morning tasks, also consider what your planning time and after school routine should look like.

Emily

If one of your after school tasks is to make copies, but you don't do it, then by default, it becomes your problem in the morning.

Heidi

As we have all learned the hard way.

Emily

Guilty as charged.

Heidi

So last Friday, I was watching an Instagram story from Sam at Engineer Does Education.

Emily

Oh, yay, I love Sam. If you remember, she shared a tip for SOPs in the classroom back in episode 76 of our Teacher Approved Tips series.

Heidi

Yeah, definitely go back and check it out if you need a refresher on that one. She has such good ideas for how to optimize your teaching.

Heidi

But in her story that she shared, she was showing a video of her classroom at the end of the week. And you know how classrooms look by Friday afternoon. She was pointing out some mess on a table and she said that she was definitely going to take care of that because this is not how Friday Sam is going to treat Monday Sam.

Emily

Oh my gosh, I love that. It's so easy to resent the idea of a routine, maybe we resist tying ourselves down because it feels boring or restrictive. But if we can reframe a routine as a gift to ourselves, which is one of those things that works really well for me, it can make it easier to complete tasks that aren't that appealing.

Heidi

There is no way around the list of things that have to get done. And since we have all this stuff to do, let's make what we do count.

Heidi

So once you have listed all of the tasks that you need to accomplish, and you've decided which ones actually have to be done in the morning, the next step is to sequence them.

Emily

So one way to do that is to rank your tasks in order of importance, but that actually might not be the most effective way to sequence your list.

Heidi

So let's say your top priority task is getting copies made for the day. And your next priority task is sharpening pencils. You can do that at the same time because the sharpener the next have a copy machine may happen to be better than the one in your classroom that just chews up pencils.

Heidi

But then the fifth thing on your list is to cut construction paper for a lesson on antonyms. And once you get to that point of your list, that means going back to the workroom. It would have just been way more efficient to get the papers while you were in the work room in the first place.

Emily

As you're sequencing those morning tasks, look for things you can batch do similar tasks at the same time, or things that need to be done in the same place at the same time. Because batching really helps cut down on running around and helps keep you focused.

Heidi

And as you were sequencing your morning tasks, you also need to consider if some of your mornings during the week look different than others.

Emily

Maybe you tend to get to work later on Tuesdays because your partner leaves early on Tuesday mornings and you're getting the kids ready by yourself. Maybe you have crosswalk duty on Friday and instead of prepping a math lesson, you're holding a stop sign in the street, which is a whole other conversation but we'll just carry on.

Heidi

Or maybe you have collaboration before school on Wednesdays. And that means the whole faculty is trying to use the copier in the five minutes before the bell rings been there. Those disruptions have a big impact on how much you can get done in the morning.

Emily

And that means your morning routine might look different depending on the day.

Heidi

This is the sort of thing that used to derail my organization as a teacher. Because I wasn't accounting for these disruptions in my routine by planning ahead, I still had the same amount of work to get done on a morning with a before school IEP as I did in the morning, when I had 30 minutes to prep for the day.

Emily

If you know you're going to have a disrupted morning, you have to prepare for that ahead of time. That means staying later the day before. Or it might mean you need a different approach to your morning tasks.

Heidi

Yeah, you might need to look at your mornings across a whole week instead of day by day.

Emily

So obviously there are some things that have to be done every day, you have to turn on your computer or post your morning message, change the date on the board or the kids will freak out. You can't do those ahead of time. So you can make those types of tasks the core of your morning routine. But maybe you can push the other tasks into a larger routine.

Heidi

Right. Maybe Monday mornings, I do my core daily tasks and then I spend the rest of the morning tidying my room. And that's the only time I do a big organization during the week. Maybe Tuesday mornings, I have faculty meetings, so I only have time for my core morning tasks. But Wednesday mornings, instead of making one set of copies a day, I make all the copies I need for math between now and next Wednesday.

Emily

I think it makes sense to plan around the schedule you actually have instead of the schedule you usually have.

Heidi

And as you can see, everyone's morning tasks are going to be very different. Even teachers at the same school in the same grade are going to have different mornings.

Emily

But there is one thing that likely everyone could use and that is a written list.

Heidi

I have no problem with my regular to do list. I love a to do list. But for some reason I resist running down steps for my routines. I think I tell myself that because it's part of a routine, I'll just remember, but I do not if it's not a habit yet.

Emily

A written list keeps you from forgetting. But it also saves you from wasting time and energy deciding what to do first. It can be so freeing to know that you have a clear plan to help you move through the morning in a productive way instead of floundering from task to task.

Heidi

So we are all going to write it down, including me, I already wrote on my sticky note, put it on my mirror. So you put your list where you will actually reference it. If you are a digital planner, there are tons of to do list apps that you can use, or even a Google Doc works great.

Emily

Or you can keep it simple and write it on a post it note and stick it on your computer, or get fancy and print it out and laminate it.

Heidi

Use whatever format works best for you. But just remember that this is going to have to adapt, you're going to have to tweak it over time. So you want to make it easy to add any adjustments. If you are a laminator and you laminate your list, it's hard to edit your steps. And that can lead to you stopping using your list altogether.

Emily

So unless you really like printing and laminating things and want to do it over and over and you're happy to have an excuse to do that, you might want to hold off on making a permanent list.

Heidi

And while you are doing yourself a favor and creating a thought out morning routine list, do yourself another favor by putting an easy win at the top of that list.

Emily

Yeah, maybe your first step is just to refer to your list. Hmm. Then you get to start by checking a task off right away.

Heidi

Look at that you're practically finished with your tasks already.

Emily

Or you're on your way anyway.

Heidi

Well, that is something. We'd love to hear your thoughts on your teacher morning routine before students arrive. Come join the conversation in our Teacher Approved Facebook group.

Emily

Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is create an extra planning time.

Heidi

So I want to start by saying that this may not fly at your school. But I really hope it's something that you can make work if it seems like it would be useful for you.

Heidi

Okay, so I like to use my planning time and my after school work time on Fridays to prepare for the next week. I think a lot of teachers do that. But in order to do that, I needed to have actually planned the next week.

Heidi

So I claimed the half hour before lunch on Fridays as my unofficial next week planning time. In our daily schedule, that was normally the time we would do a phonics lesson. So I use that time on Fridays for a phonics review. And please note that when I say review, I'm actually spelling it, video.

Heidi

So each week, I picked an episode of the PBS series Between the Lions for my class to watch, while I worked on planning. And you know what? It was epic. It were so well. I could be a lot more intentional with my work time on Friday, because I knew it needed to get done for the next week. And the kids enjoyed the video so much they didn't realize they were learning.

Emily

Between the Lions is such a good series, especially the first couple of seasons. So it wasn't like you're putting on an episode of Arthur, which is entertaining but not particularly educational.

Heidi

Plus, I have to admit it felt like a bit of a win. After so many years of being at the mercy of the education machine, it was nice that for at least 30 minutes a week, I was actually making that system work in my favor, instead of mowing me under like it usually did.

Emily

If there's a spot in your schedule where you can add in a little video review, take advantage of adding an extra planning time to your week. But only if you won't get in trouble. Don't get mad at us.

Heidi

To wrap up the show we are sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

Emily

I'm giving extra credit to the Untitled Goose Game for the Nintendo Switch. Now Heidi's laughing because I am not a video game player like at all like my kids don't like to play Mario Kart with me because I can't I'm always running into the walls like I'm just not not into gaming at all.

Emily

But my kids really enjoy it. And I just thought it would be good if there was something we could play together sometimes that we could all just enjoy doing that together. And I wanted a game that was made for playing together and also that it wouldn't matter too much that I don't have very good video gaming skills.

Emily

So I did a little research and I just discovered this game and now the premise of the game is that you are a goose and I think it's supposed to be in Britian, clearly. And you play it as a team. So there we played it as two geese. And we had a to do list that we were working on together, and it is a to do list of mischief.

Emily

So it was things we needed to do like grabbing the gardeners keys and throwing them in the pond and stealing his produce from the garden or snagging some glue paper from an outdoor market and taking it away to your little nest. It's complete silliness. And you can honk at each other, which are the characters in the game to like, scare them away. And you can work together where one of you distracts the character while the other one's doing something naughty.

Emily

It's absolute silliness in every way. But we had so much fun. And also it has renewed my deep fear of geese, because those things are evil. They're so mean. I'm deeply afraid of geese. But it was a fun game. So Untitled Goose Game, I highly recommend it. If you need a little family, Nintendo Switch game. Heidi, what are you giving extra credit to?

Heidi

My extra credit goes to The After Party on Apple TV. The second season just finished and it was so fun. If you haven't seen it before, the premise is that there is a murderer and someone at the after party did it. It sounds a little bleak, but it's very funny.

Heidi

As each of the suspects is questioned, they tell their recollection of the night's events in the style of a movie genre, like a rom com or action movie or musical. And I liked the first season, but the second season has really knocked it out of the park. And I'm not just saying that because the second episode was a Jane Austen inspired romance. It was so fun. And they were all been so good. There's a Wes Anderson one. This epic romantic drama, they're so good.

Heidi

A few of the characters from the first season are in the second season, but you definitely don't have to watch the first season to be able to follow the second season. Hello, there's an easter egg that you probably wouldn't appreciate without having seen the first season, but it's not vital. And if you need a new show, because I think we're all a little bit limited on new shows these days. I highly recommend it.

Emily

And I gotta get caught up on the I've only to the Jane Austen episode, which like you said is the second one. So I've got lots to watch.

Heidi

I think my favorite's The uncle when so you've got that to look forward.

Emily

Okay, I'm excited.

Heidi

That's it for today's episode. Make an optimized to do list for your teacher morning routine. And don't forget our teacher approved tip to create a little extra planning time in your schedule.

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