With the end of the school year quickly coming to an end, you’re probably thinking, Yes, I’m finally done and don’t have to worry about school anymore! However, you know how much we love giving gifts to our future selves, which is why it might be time to start thinking about next year before this year is finished. To help you have a better back-to-school start, in today’s episode, we’re sharing three things you can do now to prep for next school year.

For all the resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes:

https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/prep-for-next-school-year

Resources:

• Be on our Back to School Audio Course waitlist
• End-of-Year Lists & Reflection
• Connect with us on Instagram @2ndstorywindow
• Shop our teacher-approved resources
• Join our Facebook group, Teacher Approved
• Leave your review on Apple Podcasts!

Mentioned in this episode:

Grab The Holiday Headstart Playbook at https://theholidayheadstart.com/playbook And don't miss our new podcast, The Holiday Headstart: https://pod.link/1739162255

Do you have a question or concern that could use a teacher-approved solution? We'd love to answer your question on the podcast! Submit your question to hello@secondstorywindow.net and put "podcast question" in your subject line.

Emily 0:37

Hey there, thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're sharing three things you can do now as a gift to your future self. And sharing a teacher approved tip for making next year's procedures go a little bit easier.

Heidi 0:52

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 how do you personally celebrate and recognize the end of the school year?

Heidi 1:04

I don't know if I did anything crazy special I always made sure to go out and watch the the buses drive off even if I wasn't on bus duty that day. And some years you know I was waving goodbye with tears in my eyes. And I'm gonna be honest that some years I needed to watch the buses leave to make sure that those kids were gone.

Emily 1:22

Closure each way.

Heidi 1:24

Not my problem anymore. And then we always have like a catered faculty luncheon or one a year.

Emily 1:32

That was so nice! Our school didn't do anything. Everyone was just like running out the doors to get out of there like no, no. Yeah, like I said closure. I think it's good to like do something to like mark the finality of like finishing a year. It's done. You did it.

Emily 1:52

We got some fun responses from our Facebook group members. Leah says my son and I get ice cream on his last day of school been doing it since preschool. He's a freshman in high school this year. That's a sweet one. Kim says pack up organize my stuff and go home for the summer. Always want to have the first week prep but it never happens. And hopefully we have some tips in this episode to help Kim get that first week prepped in advance.

Emily 2:15

Jennifer and Holly are both celebrating with sleep. Jennifer says she has big plans to go home and go to bed. And Holly has already scheduled a two day nap.

Heidi 2:24

She's earned it I'm sure.

Emily 2:25

For sure. But Misty's school goes all out once the kids are gone. She says on the last day of school after everyone has packed up their rooms and checked out with admins we all go out to have lunch and drinks then we have a pool party at a staff member's house. That does sound like fun. I know on game for the lunch. I don't know if I'd like I think by poolparty timer be like alright, I'm trying to get people I'm out of here. Said with Love Of course.

Emily 2:50

We'd love to hear how you mark the end of the school year. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily 2:56

Now, if there's one thing we love, it is giving a gift to our future selves.

Heidi 3:02

For some reason, it feels so much easier to be proactive when I frame it, like I'm getting something special out of this instead of I'm checking things off my to do list.

Emily 3:12

Absolutely. So today we're going to talk about three gifts you can give your future self and not just any random version of you in the future. We're talking about giving the gift of getting ahead to the person who absolutely needs it most your back to school self.

Heidi 3:29

Your poor back to school self. The list of things that you have to accomplish before school starts may in fact be infinite. I don't think I have ever gotten to the end of that particular to do list. And you know if I've gotten close to the end, but today, we have got three things that you can check off that list right away to set yourself up for a successful start to the year.

Emily 3:49

To start with the first gift to give your future self is the gift of decluttering.

Heidi 3:56

Did you just groan? I think I heard someone groan. Yes, decluttering is not the most fun use of time. If we like to declutter, the clutter wouldn't build up in the first place.

Emily 4:08

But think how nice it will be to have that particularly dreaded task out of the way. When you're also worried about labeling 75 notebooks and setting up for meet the teacher night.

Heidi 4:19

You will be so happy to have that already taken care of. Decluttering really might be the best gift you can give your future self. But let's simplify it so it doesn't feel so overwhelming.

Emily 4:31

And we really do mean simple. Let's start by just observing open every single one of your cupboards and drawers and just look what's in there. Do not I repeat, do not take everything out yet.

Heidi 4:45

Yeah, if you start pulling stuff out, you are going to find yourself in the deep end of mid project regret syndrome. Yeah, I've been there. I think every time I get that big energy like I'm gonna change it all and then I regret every second of it.

Emily 5:01

Yep. That's the times when I end up having to shove things off my bed so I can go to sleep because I committed to a project I should not have committed. Yeah, yeah, so don't dive in just yet. The goal here is just to give an idea of what you have in all of your cupboards and drawers, you can even snap a picture and take a look at them later at home, just so you're not tempted to start yanking stuff out of there.

Heidi 5:24

As you survey all the bags, and the bins and the boxes stacked on your shelves, pay attention to what you notice. Do you see some things right away that can be tossed or donated? There is no sense organizing what can be removed. So definitely start there. That should immediately free up some of the space in your cupboards and drawers.

Emily 5:43

The throwing away donating part is my favorite part of decluttering. Like, gone, gone, out of here. You will feel like a whole new teacher with all the junk out of the way.

Emily 5:55

The next simple step is to make sure that all similar things are together. If your dice are in one cupboard and your place value blocks in a totally different one, you could try grouping math manipulatives together.

Heidi 6:06

The advantage of grouping things is that you are much more likely to know what you have and use what you have when it's all together.

Emily 6:14

Plus, now that you've cleared out the junk and you can see all your stuff together in one place. You can tell if you need a better storage system. Would your phonics cards benefit from a drawer system? Do you need some Grab and Go bins for your math manipulatives?

Heidi 6:30

So I may not like decluttering. But I do love shopping for organizers. So this is the part of the project I am here for.

Emily 6:38

Yeah, I'm changing my vote, this is the best part of the decluttering process is getting to buy new containers. And after that it is time to start purging. If you haven't used it in a year, it's time to let it go.

Heidi 6:51

It is so easy to hold on to stuff thinking that you will find the perfect reason to use it. But if you haven't used it yet, are you really going to get around to it? I had a rubber stamp of a clock face that I got at a workshop as a beginning teacher. And I don't know what you're supposed to do with that, like put it out in a center. But it seems to me like rubber stamp and clock faces is not a good use of time for anyone, when kids just do and fill that out on a paper that's already printed.

Heidi 7:21

But I held on to that stamp the whole time I taught second grade, that would be 10 plus years. So when you come across whatever your version of a clock face rubber stamp is, try asking yourself, if future you will be glad you hold on to it or be more grateful that you made space and cleared it out.

Emily 7:39

Let's be honest future you will probably be glad you tossed it. In fact, future you will probably forget you ever even known once it's gone, you'll never think of it again.

Emily 7:48

And don't forget to tackle your digital clutter too. Get your files in order clean up your desktop. That's a task that's not too overwhelming. But will make things simpler every time you need to work on your computer. And if you happen to have a laptop, that's something you can work on at home.

Heidi 8:04

Yeah, that's a nice bonus. But even if this laid back approach to decluttering feels too overwhelming for where you're at right now. That's okay, here is one tiny step you can do. Try setting up an important papers box. Anything that you know you need to hang on to should go in this box.

Emily 8:23

Having a set place to store the stuff you need to keep will help you in two ways. First, when you eventually start your deep clean, you'll know you're not tossing anything vital. And second, since you can gather everything in one safe location, you won't have to stop and file every important paper as you come across it.

Heidi 8:41

Just think how happy you are going to be in August to have at least part of your decluttering already done. But let's see what else we can take care of now. Let's try giving our future selves the gift of preparation.

Emily 8:53

Oh, that's a very good gift for our future selves. And there are some simple things we can do to get ahead on our preparation. One place to start is by doing an inventory of your supplies.

Heidi 9:05

Yeah, knowing how many markers and notebooks you have stashed away will make it much easier to take advantage of back to school sales in a couple of months.

Emily 9:13

And if you're lucky enough to have a printer in your classroom, you'll definitely want to make sure you have enough toner to get you through those first few weeks.

Heidi 9:22

Running out of toner is a hassle that no one wants during back to school, especially if getting another toner cartridge is not as easy as grabbing one from the storeroom.

Emily 9:32

Yeah, I had a printer that once it ran out the first time I don't think I ever used again because it was such a hassle to get toner. And every time I needed to print it was like well I don't have toners I'll just print it to the work room again. So don't be like me plan ahead, get that toner requested.

Emily 9:51

After you've done your inventory a good next step is to start on your lists. Three lists that can help you zero in on the most important tasks are ta-da list, a fix-it list and a to do list. Tell us about these lists Heidi.

Well a ta-da list is a list of everything that went well this year. This is a handy list because it helps you identify what to make sure to repeat in the future. And then once you've got your list of what's working, it's time to pivot to what's not working. This is your fix-it list.

Then we take the things we want to repeat and the things we want to fix and use them to make our to do list. Start by going back to your ta da list, what do you need to do to make sure those great things happen again? Write it down on your to do list.

And then do the same for your fix that list. What do you need to do to improve each of those items on that list? That goes on your to do list as well.

If your to do list is starting to look a little long, we've got you covered, don't panic. Go back to Episode 64, where we talk about our three task lists, and give suggestions for how to make sure the most important stuff actually gets done.

Plus to make this even more helpful, we've got a new freebie for you. We have already set up all three of these lists in Google Sheets the ta-da and the fix-it lists have room to include each item. And then you can have space right there to write why it worked or why it didn't work.

And when you're ready to start your to do list. The sheet is set up to help you prioritize your tasks so you can make sure your most important items are accomplished first.

And it even changes color depending on how important the item is. So hopefully that can give everyone a good start on getting things organized for the summer.

Color coding makes every little bit better. I think so. So we will put a link to those free lists for you in the show notes.

Just think how happy your future self will be to know exactly where to jump into with all of the back to school prep when you're finally ready to take that on.

Another resource to help your future self is our new back to school course. We have been hard at work on a course to help teachers start back to school this year, with less stress and more confidence because you know us we're kind of obsessed with the back to school and getting it down to a science.

Knowing how busy you are, we designed a back to school audio course so you can listen while you do other things this summer. We'll walk you through everything you need to do to set your intentions, identify your priorities, set up your systems, and actually get things done so you can have the best back to school season ever. I can't think of a better gift to your future self than this.

Our first round of the course will be for a limited number of teachers so that we can offer you all the best support possible. If you want to be the first to know when we opened the course so you can get a chance to grab one of the first course seats, head to secondstorywindow.net/waitlist to sign up.

Besides signing up for our course, a huge gift you can give your future self is to start on your back to school copies. If you have an idea of the activities you plan to do the first week, make those copies now so you're not stuck waiting for the one working copier whenever one starts back in August and also needs to make their copies.

This was always such a dumb sticking point for me. I don't know why it was so hard. I wanted to get ahead on everything I needed to do. But for some reason, though, it always felt like prepping for the first week back was absolutely impossible. Because getting all of my big summer projects tackled first was more important.

We did have a bad habit of taking on big summer projects.

And that frame of mind really didn't serve me well. I followed my first week school plans pretty consistently from year to year with maybe just a few tweaks. So I basically knew what I needed. I could have done a lot of the first week prep in May, and spared myself the yearly tradition of a last minute panic.

So learn from our mistakes and prep as much of your first week as you can right now. And if you want some help planning a detailed first week of school, we will be covering that in the back to school audio course as well.

Another way to give your future self the gift of preparation is to batch your tasks. Batching is when you group similar tasks together. So you know if you're making copies for the first day of school, you can also make your copies for meet the teacher night and your first week of math lessons. If you're making slides for one lesson, see if you can use that lesson as a template and make slides for several lessons at the same time.

Not only does batching get you ahead, but it uses your time and energy more efficiently because you're able to really focus on one type of task at a time.

Really batching will save you so much time in the long run. Also consider tasks like assembling all of your student birthday gifts at once. Making packs of supplies for new students that you're going to get during the year. Preparing your slides for teaching procedures and anything else that you're going to need frequently down the road.

And if you really want a gold star for planning ahead, consider preparing for your Donkey Kong barrels. Stay with me if you remember the original Donkey Kong game, which obviously we're old, so we do, your little Mario is trying to rescue the princess, he has to scale ladders and jump hurdles and collect hammers. But as if that weren't hard enough, Donkey Kong starts throwing barrels at him. Now he's got all these barrels to dodge.

These barrels come at you all the time, as a teacher. You are finally getting systems in place, you're doing your best to just make it through another day. And then your principal sends an email reminding everyone to put some nice student work in the hallway before parent conferences, but you don't have anything to put out in the hallway. Or you've got mandatory training next Tuesday. And now you have to make sub plans on top of your regular plans. Things like this get thrown at us all the time as teachers. And I think that's how we ended up falling behind.

So if you've got an idea of what some of your barrels might be, try preparing now so you're ready for them. Make a set of emergency sub plans for each month or copy and prep your hallway displays now so you can just pull everything out from your cupboard and be ready to go before parent conferences.

And then when that barrel gets thrown at you, you don't even have to dodge you can just blast it out of the air.

Oh, so how is that how it works? I don't think I blasted any barrels?

I don't think so. But it should be

I want to throw it back. There we go the barrel back. Take that Donkey Kong.

But if you were not in a place to take on any big barrel prep right now, that's okay. Here is a simple suggestion that you can try instead, this comes from listener Shannon, who said, I usually sharpen pencils for the coming year, just a box or two a week. But that's one thing off of next year's list.

Such a good idea. Okay, so we're giving ourselves the gift of decluttering and preparing. What is the third gift we can give our future selves Heidi?

Well the third gift is the gift of packing up efficiently. This may sound complicated, but it really basically comes down to don't make things harder than they need to be.

Right. We're making this as easy as possible. So avoid taking down anything you can leave up. And now I know some schools are strict about what you can leave up. But if they will let you leave it up, leave it up. And don't store junk, you'll just have to toss later.

Of course, no one is doing that because they already gave themselves the gift of decluttering. Right?

Of course, good thing we started with decluttering. Now how do we make sure we're not making things harder than they need to be when we're packing up our rooms? Well first take photos of how you want things to look when you set your room up in the fall. How you had your shelves arranged is one of those things that's easy to forget. So a photo can be a real lifesaver.

Then we're going to start by pulling up things we need over the summer, and then packing up the rest efficiently so that it is easy to unpack later.

Start by considering what school work you'll be doing over the summer. If you need your teacher's guides or curriculum map, make sure you set all of that aside, maybe start a box of things to take home for summer projects, take them anything you'll need to reference so you don't have to come into the school during the summer.

After gathering up summer projects. The next thing to do is to gather anything that you'll need to put your room back together. And we'd like to put this all in one place we call a need first box. It's all the stuff we need first, right?

One of the tips we suggested last fall was to keep a list of all of the supplies you use setting up your room. If you made that list, and if you have managed to hold on to it. This is the moment to use it.

And gold star for you if you did that, but even if you didn't and you don't have a list. If you've set up a room before you probably have a good idea of what you need. Grab your need first box, label it and toss in your hot glue gun, your stapler your thumb tacks, your bulletin board borders, your labels and any other supplies you rely on to get your room up and running.

Think of how happy future you will be to have everything you need all in one place. And not to have to go digging through a dozen drawers to find your sticky tack into clothes pins. Just to make sure you can actually get to your need first box when you need it, you might want to take it home with you. That way you don't have to worry about it getting buried in the back of a cupboard.

After packing up your summer projects and filling your need first box gather everything you'll need when the kids show up. Do a sweep of your classroom and pull out any books, games, files or other resources you'll need that first week.

If you wrote a first day script last year, go back and look that over unless you're going to completely overhaul what you did. It can give you really good guidance for what resources you'll need for this year.

So far, we've got three boxes we've got a summer project box, a need first supply box, and a first week of school box. Now it's time to start packing things up.

But before you just start shoving things into cabinets, which was definitely how I packed. Make sure you leave space to securely store all of your technology over the summer.

Right, you don't want to toss all your math manipulatives into your one cabinet that locks. If your Chromebooks will have to go in there in a few weeks, your future self will not thank you if they wind up unpacking everything you've just packed.

Another thing you might want to do is to label all of your cords and plugs. Those things tend to get separated from their devices when you're moving them around and ask me how we know. And labeling them ahead of time will make setting up so much easier in the future.

You may even want to get ahead of the game and store all your cords and plugs in one central location. Again, make sure they're labeled first, believe me. But if you put them all in one spot, you don't have to worry about an important cord getting lost in the shuffle.

Once you have pulled out everything your future self is going to need from your classroom, and you have a plan for how to store your technology, you can start taking down the rest. Schools have different requirements on this as Emily mentioned. So double check before you start packing up everything.

But regardless of where you teach, you're probably going to have to take at least a few things down. Last year, we rounded up listener tips for managing the end of the school year and Debbie had this dish share.

She says at six weeks before the end of the school year I choose the least used corner of my classroom and start putting it away. The following week, I choose the next least use corner and start moving everything toward the closets where I store everything for the summer. I continue this with the other two corners, except I leave anything that I'm using for the moment. Believe it or not, the kids barely even notice when I do this. When the end of the school year comes I have very little to put away and at that point I can ask the kids to help me.

This is a great way to tackle such an overwhelming task in a more manageable way. But the other benefit I see is that putting things away one corner a time will make it so much easier to put it all back up in the fall. Everything that needs to be put back on the walls and shelves in one area will have been put away together. So this is a great way to help your future self.

And if you want more suggestions like the one Debbie shared, make sure to go back to Episode 61. There are some great teacher approved tips in that episode.

If you are just not ready to take on packing up your whole room. Here is an easy get ahead step: gather your passwords. This is one of those things that we tell ourselves that we'll remember all the passwords we need to get into all of our programs. But we won't. Three months is a long time to forget which login goes with which device, help your future self by getting all of your passwords in one location now while it's still fresh in your mind.

Then just make sure you know where that location is. Emailing it to yourself might be the easiest solution. That's my preferred way to send things that I will need later. But do whatever works for you.

So as you are wrapping up your school year, do what you can to make things easier on yourself down the road. Consider giving your future self the gifts of decluttering, preparation and packing up efficiently. And of course, you'll want the awesome gift of getting on our email list at secondstorywindow.net/waitlist so you will be the first to know when we launch our new back to school course.

We'd love to hear what gifts you're giving to your future back to school self. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

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 use photographs from this year to teach next year's procedures. Tell us about this Heidi?

Well this is your annual reminder to take your photos now. If you are in a situation where you more or less know you will be doing this same procedures next school year that you're using this year, have your current students help you teach your future students. Take photos or even better take videos of your students completing each step of your procedures. And then when it's time to teach them in the fall, you've got photos of kids completing the steps in your room with your materials.

You can go an extra step and have this your students even create a class handbook explaining the steps and what to remember about each procedure. It's a good way to fill some time at the end of the year. Plus kids are way more engaged in learning about something from another kid than from a boring old grown up anyway.

And if you've got a procedure or two that is on your fixit list, you might want to take some time before the end of the school year to try out possible solutions with your current students. It's tempting to think that it's too late to fix anything at this point. So you'll just start over in the fall. But if you tweak things now you'll already have a game plan in place for your new crop of students.

Troubleshooting as much as you can now really will make it so much easier to hit the ground running in the fall. And at the very least your future self will be so glad to have the photos ready to teach all of those procedure steps. Can't believe we're already talking about starting all over again.

And you'll just pop those pictures right into our tell, try tally slides if you really want to make it easy.

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

I'm giving extra credit to the boardgame Splendor which one of my kids got for Christmas. We're big game lovers at my house. But I am very picky about which ones I am willing to play with the kids. I like the games to move fast to be easy to learn and have an engaging premise. Bonus points if it doesn't take a million years to play, and Splendor fits the bill. All of those checks checked off.

In Splendor you compete to build Renaissance Europe's most lucrative and prestigious jewelry business. Oh, and attract the attention of nobles. Of course, we all found it really engaging and fun. And to be honest, I might like it even more than my kids do.

The only frustrating thing is you can be so close to winning when somebody else finally like wins it and you're still that feeling like we've had tears and I don't know how to have a talk. In this house we're not sore losers. And it's okay if you don't win. I'm trying to build some skills with this. But to be honest, I'm usually the one that wants to keep playing like let's just play one more round, because I got so close. And I want to do it this time.

So I have a big fan of Splendor and maybe come play it with me because my kids don't want to play it as much as I want to.

Yeah, that sounds fun. We'll have to give it a shot.

What are you giving credit to Heidi?

Okay, well I don't know if it's allowed, but I want to give myself some extra credit. Okay, let's hear it. So dumb. So I have arthritis in my thumb's, which is dumb, but that's not the dumb part of this. And we're trying to just make them so I have to wear these braces on my hands every day, just so I can function.

But I am famous for taking those braces off whenever I get tired. And I just leave them wherever I happen to be. Sometimes they're on my desk, sometimes they're in the kitchen.

I'm showing off mine, I don't I haven't invested in your fancy ones yet. But I have the same affliction as you. And so I have the cheap ones. And I'm like, Yeah, I was looking for this like for days. And I just as you said that saw it sitting here on my desk.

Yeah. So it means starting every day with a really boring scavenger hunt. So for the past few weeks, I've been trying really hard to force myself to just leave them on the bathroom counter. Like that's the only place to let myself take them off. And I have actually been doing a really good job. That's something to say because I am really good at starting things and we're good at sticking with you like I deserve some extra credit.

I do still have the constant temptation to leave them on the couch. But I'm holding strong and I'm hoping that like, now saying this out loud. I have to live up to the standard. It really is nice to have one less thing to have to deal with in the morning.

Yeah, well, I was gonna say well, Goldstar for you. And also this is just like a good method in general. That's how I have never lost my air pods. Because I have a personal rule for myself that I'm not allowed to sit them anywhere but my ear out of my ear into the case. So no matter what they have to go back in my case, so I've never lost mine.

That's so smart. Yeah, that's why I have not let myself get air pods because I will lose them in a week.

No, not if you start and it does help also if you start that habit from the minute you get something new, you're doing a harder version because you didn't start this the minute you got the thumb braces, so you should get bonus points for that.

Thank you for recognizing my struggle and my triumph.

All the extra credit.

Thank you.

That's it for today's episode. Give your future self the gift of preparing now for back to school. And don't forget today's teacher approved tip to take photos of your students completing your class procedures. That way you'll have all the examples already to go in school starts.

And head over to our website and sign up for the waitlist for our back to school audio course you can sign up at secondstorywindow.net/waitlist.