If your back-to-school overwhelm is ramping up, this episode will help calm the stress and tackle those to-do lists. We share a simple framework for prioritizing your endless tasks based on four essential student needs: safety, belonging, competence, and growth. We share why routines and procedures matter so much, how to help students feel welcomed and capable, and why focusing on the right tasks first creates a smoother start to the year. If you’re feeling pulled in a hundred directions, this episode will help you focus on the right priorities to build a classroom that is safe, connected, and ready for meaningful learning!

Prefer to read? Grab the episode transcript and resources in the show notes here: https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/back-to-school-teacher-checklist/

Resources:

• Get your FREE ticket to Teacher Summer Talks!
• Procedures and Routines Planning Guide
• Tell Try Tally Talk slides
• Our Perfect Storm
• Suction cup dish brush holder
• Preorder our book Structure and Spark
• Join The Teacher Approved Club
• Connect with us on Instagram @2ndstorywindow
• Shop our teacher-approved resources
• Join our Teacher Approved Facebook group
• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
• Leave a comment or rating on Spotify

Related Episodes to Enjoy:

• Episode 201. 20 Easy Back-To-School Teacher Tasks You Can Totally Do from the Couch
• Episode 143. The Easiest Back to School Tip
• Episode 154. 5 Steps for Classroom Procedure Success
• Episode 219. How to Build a Classroom Community That Lasts All Year
• Episode 146. Never Pick up Another Stray Crayon: Why We Love Guided Discovery

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Teacher Approved Club, where members get seasonal morning work pages for grades K–5 this month to add fall and holiday fun without throwing off their routines: https://secondstorywindow.net/club

This is episode 270 of Teacher Approved.

You're listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast

helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest.

I'm Heidi.

And I'm Emily. We're the creators behind Second Story

Window, where we give research-based and

teacher-approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and

more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources

from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

We're so glad you're tuning in today. Let's get to

the show.

Hey there, thanks for joining us today. In today's

episode, we are helping you tame your back to school to-do list,

and we've got a teacher-approved tip for making the first week a

little easier.

But first, let's start with a try it tomorrow, where we

share a quick win that you can try right away. Emily, what's

our suggestion this week?

This week, write down three things that you love about

your job, and then keep this where you will see it often. In

a few weeks, when you are in the thick of the craziest time of

year, having a reminder that teaching is more than just a

never-ending list of demands will help you get through it.

Plus, taking a moment to be grateful is such an easy way

to tame anxiety. It reminds your brain to focus on the good

that's here, instead of spiraling about all the stress.

The podcast Happier in Hollywood, that I like, at the

end of their episodes, they always say it's a fun job and we

enjoy it. And they've explained that that is their mantra, that

they say to each other. They are Hollywood TV writers, so a

stressful job, and so when they're having a really tough

time, they say that to each other to remind themselves that

they picked this job, and they like this job. So, sometimes I

say that to myself.

That is a very helpful reminder.

If you like this idea, or anything else we share here on

the podcast, we would love it if you took a second and gave us a

five star rating or review.

Back to school prep is so overwhelming. I mean, that is an

understatement, and the problem is not that you don't know what

to do, it's that your to-do list is longer than three CVS

receipts.

That is a substantial number of tasks, all of them

shouting for attention, and getting those things done isn't

a question of planning or organizing, or even working

harder, it's about prioritization.

Yeah, when everything feels equally urgent, you just

start swinging, and it turns into whacking at your to-do list

like it's a pinata, and you just hope that if you hit it hard

enough, an organized first day of school will fall out.

If only it worked like that, but instead you end up

putting in a lot of work, and it does feel rewarding to see so

many tasks crossed off your list, but you're still left with

this nagging feeling that you're not actually ready for school to

start.

So, today we're going to address that. We're giving you a

system for deciding what deserves your attention first,

so when you run out of time, you can be confident the most

essential planning is already in place.

We are calling this the foundation first method, and to

explain it, I'm going to use a dumb joke that I took a

screenshot of in 2018 and still laugh at. They say it's a

mystery how the pyramids were built, but I reckon they just

started at the bottom and worked their way up. Let's face it,

going the other way looks a lot more difficult.

Ba dum ching! That is a very dumb joke.

It is so dumb.

It's accurate, you know. It's like, how do you eat an

elephant? One bite at a time. Too often when we're faced with

a big project like starting the school year, we jump in at a

random spot without realizing that starting with the

foundation makes everything else fall into place.

Oh yeah, we do this all the time. Imagine a typical

teacher's back to school to-do list. Hopefully you know, it's

typed in an app or neatly written on a sticky note.

Or you know, scribbled on the back of an envelope, because

that's all you had handy.

Yeah, we've all got those envelope lists, and that list is

probably full of things like review dismissal procedures, buy

30 red folders, make name tags, organize math manipulatives,

decorate a bulletin board, and create a parent newsletter

template.

We are big fans of making lists, because getting tasks

written down is the first step to getting them done. However, a

list does have a big downside. When review dismissal procedures

is right next to buy folders, your brain thinks that both

these tasks have the same value, but dismissal and folders are

not equally important.

No, one of them is about making sure everyone gets home

at the end of the day with all of their right stuff, and the

other one is a nice extra to have in a couple weeks when

you're finally ready to start teaching writing. So that's why

when we look at our to-do list, we need a way to know which

tasks belong in that pyramid foundational layer.

You could use any filter that is meaningful for you to

help you prioritize your tasks, but since we're doing all this

work for the kids, we can also use them as our guide. So every

single back to school task is helping your students meet one

of four needs: safety, belonging, competence, or

growth.

Okay, we did borrow a bit from Azlo on that one, but it is

an efficient system. We're going to start our pyramid with

safety, that's the most basic need. We're going to start there

first. Once you're confident you've got safety handled, you

can move up to belonging, then competence, and then growth on

the very top.

And obviously growth is so important, but you can't get

students engaged in learning if their needs for safety aren't

being met. So, let's walk up the levels, starting at the

foundation. Think about the first day of school. What is the

minimum that has to be met for a successful day?

And this is actually pretty easy, we just need to

make sure everyone is safe, fed where they're supposed to be,

and goes home knowing that their teacher cares about them. That

is our level one school day. It's safe and functional.

Honestly, anything more than that is just a bonus.

To pull this kind of day together, start with the

school-wide systems. Do you know the policies and procedures for

arrival and dismissal, and lunch, and emergency drills?

Oh, and then you know, recess, and all the rest. And

then next, what classroom procedures do you need in place

to facilitate all of that? Think about what you want students to

do when they first arrive. What are they doing with their

backpacks and their lunch boxes?

And don't forget bathrooms. Making sure the kids

know how to get to the bathrooms when they need it is a huge part

of creating a feeling of safety.

If you want some help with this step, we've got an

awesome resource for you. This is our procedures and routines

planning guides and checklists. Basically, it's all of our

overthinking, neatly organized for you. The planning guide

looks at 26 different parts of the school day and offers

guiding questions for each one to help you think through all of

the moving pieces that go into that procedure.

And then that resource has checklists. We came up with

more than 350 different procedures you might need in

your classroom.

But please don't let that panic you. You do not need 350

procedures, but you probably need more than you think. For

dismissal, you might need a procedure for filling out a

daily agenda, tidying a desk, packing a backpack, and managing

pencils at the end of the day.

Or your pencil procedure might be one step: put your

pencil in your desk. It can be that easy, but whether it's one

step or 12, you need to have that figured out before you can

expect your students to know how to do it.

And that's why this resource is so handy. We have

thought through all of the what ifs, so you can focus on the

what now, and we will put a link to that resource in the show

notes.

Once you've figured out your procedures, you next need

to plan for teaching them. If you've been with us for very

long, you know we take this part very seriously, and that's

because - and I cannot stress this enough - procedures make or

break your school year.

Okay, so an image of Bonnie Hunt just popped into my

brain, and this is a very deep cut for all of you rom-com

girlies. This is even older than my 2018 screenshot joke, so I'm

gonna mangle a quote from Return to Me and say procedures are

your only link to reality. In the movie she says hairy legs,

which is objectively funnier, but I'm sticking with

procedures.

And then doesn't Minnie Driver say you should

needlepoint that on a pillow.

Yeah. If we needlepointed, that is 100% the

sort of thing we'd put on a pillow. The procedures part, not

the hairy legs part, but what we're trying to say is

procedures are important, and how you teach them matters.

The thing about procedures is you have to

actually teach them if you want them to stick, and the method

that we love for this is tell, try, tally, talk. So you tell

and model it, students try it while you watch, you tally how

it went together, and you talk through what to fix next time.

We have gone deep on this in episode 75, 150, and 154, and

probably in lots of other places, so we're not going to

reteach it all here, but another resource that can help you is

our Tell Try Tally Talk slides. We give you five blank slide

decks that you can duplicate and personalize. We try to make this

as easy as possible. All you have to do is add the steps you

want students to follow, and your lessons are ready to go.

And we linked those in the show notes as well. The

connection might not be obvious, but procedures about how to walk

in the hallway are an essential part of filling students' need

for safety. That's because of what's happening inside kids'

bodies when they walk into your room for the first time.

Yeah, you know there are no tigers waiting to pounce on

them, and logically the kids know that too, but their nervous

systems encounter a new situation, and they immediately

start scanning for danger.

And a kid who's spending all their energy worrying about

how my teacher expects me to walk in the hall is not learning

anyone's name and is definitely not learning math. But when you

teach procedures clearly, you're basically handing students a

roadmap that guides every step, and that's lifting a weight of

anxiety off of them.

So, that is the first level of back to school prep,

our safe and functional layer. When you're looking through that

giant to-do list, highlight anything related to creating a

sense of safety. Start with those tasks if you're not sure

where to begin your prep. That way, even if nothing else gets

done on your first day, you ensure that you have hit the

most important benchmark.

Obviously, part of creating a safe and functional

school day is teaching students how to respond to emergency

drills, but unless your school actually mandates teaching

drills on your first day, we recommend pushing it until later

in the week.

Yeah, I really like to do it at the end of the first week,

and that's because, instead of creating a feeling of safety,

teaching emergency procedures often has the opposite effect.

Kids start imagining all the what ifs and the what should I

dos, and that ratchets up the anxiety they're already feeling

to an 11. But if you can wait a few days, the kids will be more

settled, they'll have more trust in you. So, the worries that an

emergency drill might stir up will not be so acute.

Okay, so once kids feel physically safe, it's time to

move up a layer to the next student need, which is

connectedness. And this is where we create a school day that is

warm and welcoming.

So, this is like the shift from here's how we do

things, to I'm so glad you're here. Every kid should leave day

one believing that my teacher likes me, and my teacher is

excited to know me.

And this takes work, but it's worth aiming for, because

kids who feel they belong are more engaged in what's happening

in their classroom, and engaged students create fewer problems.

And really, that's not an exaggeration. You can have the

best management system ever designed, and if the kids

haven't bought into it, it does not matter. You can't force

cooperation out of a kid, unfortunately, I guess. But a

kid who feels known and liked by you will put in effort to meet

your expectations.

And obviously, we're building these relationships

because we love the kids, but yes, you also get a management

boost out of it, and it's okay to like that bonus.

Yeah, there's not a lot of bonuses in teaching, so we

should maximize the few we do get. A simple way to create a

feeling of belonging is making students' names visible in the

room. Even if you use numbers to label most things, aim to have

names in at least three places.

That might be the student's desk nameplate, or on

the job chart, or a birthday chart. But the one place you

really need a name is outside the door. This doesn't have to

be fancy, just even if you print out a class list and post it

outside the door, and you don't have to leave it up all year,

but at the start of the year, it's a way to say, Hey, you

belong here, you're in the right place.

And in practical terms, that helps a lost kid know they

found the right room. My second-grade classroom was on

the opposite side of the building from the first-grade

rooms, so I often had students getting disoriented the first

few days, and a door display helped everyone find their way

back into the right room. In my early years of teaching, when I

was still young and had lots of energy, I went to the effort to

make a big display, something really, something with a wow

factor. I was trying to impress people, but after that, I kept

it simple. I bought cut out shapes and stuck a label on

them. It did the same thing, but took 20 minutes instead of two

hours.

But this goes back to focusing on the foundational

stuff first. If you had the time and energy, and all the other

pieces for the first day were in place, spending time on an

impressive door display would have been fine. But since I was

the one helping you prep, I know that you did not have the

foundational pieces in place.

I did not, and bless you for helping me get on track so

many times. So everyone, learn from my mistakes. Go through

your to-do list and mark any tasks that help with community

building. You can put that as a B for belonging, that way you

know what to work on after you have safety covered.

And if you want some more support with creating a

classroom that fosters belonging, we have got several

episodes to help you out. Check out episodes 87, 148, 211, and

219 for lots more tips and tricks.

And then, once you've got this connection layer in place,

let's move up to student independence. Where level one,

safe and functional, means a kid can get through the day, layer

three, calm and predictable, means a kid knows how to get

through the day.

And that sounds similar, but this is the difference

between your procedures requiring your direct

supervision to happen or mostly running on their own.

You don't have time to coach kids through every minute

of the day, so you definitely need them independent as soon as

possible. So, think about the supports required to make this

happen. This might mean posting visuals for important routines,

assigning class jobs, or really streamlining tasks.

While this does help the teacher, it also helps the kids.

This layer addresses the need to feel competent. Think about

walking into a restaurant with some unfamiliar system, the ones

where you have to order in some weird way because they're trying

to be cool and trendy.

Or you know, those places where your salad is served on a

slice of wood or in a fishbowl.

Why, why do they do that?

I don't know.

They should just use regular dishes. If the food is

good, then that's what you want to remember. It shouldn't be

that the dishes were so remarkable.

Yes, exactly. Because you're never going to call a

place like that your favorite restaurant. That's kind of what

it's like for kids on day one. The room could be wonderful, but

until they know how it works, they can't settle in and enjoy

it. So let's add to the to-do list the list of expectations

that need to be taught.

Procedures are for steps that need to be done the same

way every time, but expectations are for creating standards for

responsibility. You need a procedure for what students

should do if their pencil breaks, but you also need

expectations for how they should treat their pencils.

Yeah. For some reason, kids need it spelled out that we

don't chew on pencils, we don't tear up the erasers, we don't

draw on things that aren't paper, we don't cram tiny pencil

nubs into the sharpener.

Kids just have a way to make things so hard.

Why?

When we use tell try tally talk for procedures, we

like guided discovery for expectations. It gets kids

invested in using materials the right way, instead of you just

listing rules.

So, we dug into guided discovery in episode 146 so we

won't do that today, but all the information is there if you want

it. And then, once kids finally feel safe, welcomed, and

capable, they are ready to learn, and that takes us to the

top of our pyramid, learning and thriving.

And the very good news is, there is no expectation that

you do much of anything for this layer on the first day. Your

first day does not have to include content. Kids will learn

so much more across the year if you spend the first few days

building the foundation that lets rich learning happen.

But even if we're not diving into content on day one,

that doesn't mean we're ignoring it completely. Think about it

backwards. If you want kids successfully working at learning

centers in three weeks, what's the very first skill underneath

that? Maybe it's moving around the room quickly and quietly, or

maybe it's cooperating with a partner, or handling materials

without destroying them.

And you can apply that same idea to your lessons.

Instead of teaching place value right out of the gate, teach

them how to turn and talk, how to respond chorally, how to use

a whiteboard and marker without it becoming a whole thing.

You are not behind when you do this. This is making sure

you have the independence layer solidly in place before you try

to build on top of it. It's how you make sure that the content

sticks on their little brains two weeks from now.

Another part of back to school learning is reviewing

content from the previous year, but even if it's technically

academic content, you can layer in the other goals at the same

time. So maybe on the second or third day of school you pair up

students to play a review game. That way you're establishing

expectations around partner work, and you're building a

sense of community and belonging, and you're also

reviewing content all at once. So three wins for the price of

one.

Okay, we've just thrown like four months worth of work

at you in 20 minutes, and in case you've ever wondered why

the start of the year is exhausting, this is why.

Seriously, you have hundreds of essential tasks that

have to be done before the kids walk through the doors, but as

we mentioned, not all of those tasks contribute equally to the

success of the start of the year, so let's make sure we're

building the foundation first.

Grab your to-do list and a blank sheet of paper, and then

you can fold the paper into fourths or draw lines, if you've

got a steadier hand than I do. Label the boxes for the four

back to school needs: safety, belonging, competence, and

growth. And then you can start filling in the page with tasks

from your list. And now you've got a pretty good idea of where

to start your prep work.

But of course this is just a tool, not a law. If

you're someone who cannot think about procedures until every

bulletin board is up, that's fine. You can start there.

Or if planning your first read-aloud is the thing that

makes you excited to start the year, just go ahead and plan it,

but be clear, right, about needing to swing back to the

tasks that create safety before you get too far into things.

I just had a memory of, I think, just a few days before

school started for your very first year, me being up on a

chair trying to make that tree out of out of butcher paper, and

spoiler alert, it did not turn out well, but that was probably

not the most important thing that we could have been working

on.

No, but we didn't know what else to do, because nobody

had prepped me, and you hadn't even started college yet.

I was in high school, I think I was a senior that year.

We didn't know we were doing, paper trees were where we

understood.

Well, feeling ready for the first day starts with

knowing the right things are getting done, and that's the

goal. If you want help getting those foundational layers in

place before the first bell, that is exactly what we're doing

at Teacher Summer Talks this year.

This is our free audio summit, July 20th through the

23rd. We've got more than 30 short sessions from teachers who

get it, and the nice thing is you can listen to all of that

while you're folding laundry or taking kids to the pool. You're

not gonna be chained to a screen all afternoon.

And this year, we're adding a challenge to our

summit, so you can join us every day during the summit for a live

call, and we will walk you through making your first day

plans, so at the end of the summit, you'll have your first

day all planned minute by minute. That's our specialty. So

grab your free ticket at secondstorywindow.net/summertalks

and come build your back to school plan with us. We would

love to have you there.

Now, for our teacher-approved tip of the week, where we share

an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and

simplify the rest. This week's teacher-approved tip is make a

list of the order to teach your procedures. Where do we start

with it, Heidi?

Well, as we mentioned, you can't introduce all your

procedures at once and still have kids remember them, so that

means teaching them one at a time. To do that effectively,

you need to know the right order to go in. We always recommend

starting with the bathroom procedures very first, and then

second is your attention signal. After that, you need to think

about the flow of your day. What do students need to understand

before the next activity?

We call these hinge points because the success of

the activity hinges on whether or not students understand what

to do. Think about everything students need to be successful

at lunchtime, and then schedule time to teach that before lunch.

Even if you teach fifth grade, you can't just drop kids off in

the cafeteria without some discussion of what should be

happening.

So, here's how I set up my first morning, and I'm

sharing this not because I think it's a perfect example, but

because I think the thought process might help you get your

wheels turning. So, for me, after I had run through my

bathroom procedures, and to be fully transparent, I did not do

a full tell, try, tally, talk on bathroom procedures at that

point. I just kind of explained the basics, we could get back to

that later. And then I would teach the attention signal.

By that point, my students had been in their desks for a while,

so I wanted to switch gears and move to a different spot before

I did my teacher introduction. So, how to move to the rug and

choose a seat was the hinge point for that activity. So, I

taught that next, and then we would transition to the carpet.

I would introduce myself and read a quick picture book. Then,

by that point it was getting close to recess, so it was time

to teach students how to line up, how to walk in the hall,

where to line up after recess. I would walk them back in. And I

did not let anyone take any equipment out for the first few

days, because I just couldn't add that in on top of everything

else in the first day.

Yeah, and you don't want them doing that before they know

the procedures for how to handle those materials.

They were fine. Some of the boys grumbled, but it was

fine. We all lived to tell the tale.

So, a good rule of thumb for the first week is to teach a

procedure, and then do a different type of activity.

Then, teach the next procedure. By switching gears, you help

maintain the balance of structure and spark, which keeps

everyone engaged.

But before you can bounce back and forth, you need to know

what you're coming back to. So, start by making a list of

everything students need to know how to do to function

independently in your room. This is where those procedure

checklists we mentioned can be extremely helpful. And then

circle the procedures that you absolutely have to teach on day

one.

You probably won't have time for too many on that first

day, so do another pass through the list and look for what you

can introduce on day two, then days three and four. If you have

our procedures checklist, you can use the handy dandy dropdown

menu to do this right on the page.

And a bonus of doing this is that it makes your first week

so much easier to plan, you know what's essential, and then

you're ensuring that you have the time to fit it in.

All right. To wrap up the show, we're sharing what we're giving

extra credit to this week. Emily, look at your extra

credit?

I'm giving extra credit to the book, Our Perfect Storm,

by Carly Fortune. I have read several books from her. Every

Summer After, I think it was her first big new release that

everyone was excited about, and I've liked her books, but this

one I am loving. It is so good. I'm almost done with it, and I

think it is a perfect summer read.

I've seen it on a lot of people's recommendations for the

summer. Is it like a rom-com or thriller?

It's a rom-com.

Oh, okay. Well, I'll have to check that out.

Yeah, you should.

A good summer read.

Yeah, what are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

This is less exciting, but it solved a niche problem,

and I'm probably not the only one who needs this, so I'm

giving extra credit to the suction cup dish brush holder I

got. So, okay, go back in time with me, like, I don't know, 15,

20 years, and there was this trend of putting like vinegar

and dawn in a scrub brush wand, one of those scrubby wands that

used for dishes to clean the shower with.

Yep, there's one in my shower.

Yes, I was like, why did I stop doing that? It was just

so handy after you're done showering, you just like wipe it

down real quick. You don't even have to do it every day, but

then I had this scrub brush dish goopy thing in my shower, like

there's got to be a fix for this. And there were lots of

options, actually. So I bought one, it looks like a spring, a

metal spring with two suction cups on it, it just goes on the

wall, it's supposed to go on the side of your sink. I put it on

the wall of my shower with a little dish brush holder in

there, it's kind of up high, so it's out of the way. Easy peasy,

nothing is dripping, it's, it makes me happy every time I get

in the shower to have this problem solved, and my shower

has never been cleaner.

Well, there's just nothing more satisfying than

something that solves, perfectly solves a problem that's been

bugging you.

So true. That's the kind of drug I need.

Yes.

Give me that feeling, please.

Well, that is it for today's episode. Break down your to-do

list by the needs that each task is fulfilling, and then use that

list to prioritize your time and energy.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I'm Heidi.

And I'm Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow

or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an

episode.

You can connect with us and other teachers in the

Teacher Approved Facebook group. We'll see you here next week.

Bye for now.

Bye.