Episode 286: 3 Must Do's to Close Out this School Year and Prepare for Next Year

On this episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast,  your hosts Caitlin, Jessica, and Megan spend time breaking down their top 3 Must Do's to wrap up this school year and prepare for the fall!

It can be very tempting to close up shop in May and leave the prep work for August, but in today's episode you'll learn our suggestions for simple things you can do now that your future self will definitely thank you for!

Our top three tips include:

1. Reflect on what worked and what didn't work - this will be extremely helpful with batch planning your lessons for next year.

2. Celebrate your student wins - find creative ways to celebrate your students during this time of the year.

3. Organize and declutter - whether you do this on your own or you recruit student helpers during those slow days that last week of school, leaving your classroom cleaned out and organized for August will be a weight lifted off your shoulders before summer break!

Incorporating these 3 strategies into your end of year routine will be the key to a summer break where you can truly rest, relax, and recharge!

Tune in today to hear these tips explained in this helpful episode!

BIG NEWS: The EB Teachers' ELA Portal will officially be open for enrollment this summer!If having access to ALL of the below sounds helpful to you, then we invite you to take a quick moment to add your name to our priority list today!Are you ready for:

• Hundreds of ready-to-go ELA lessons
• A robust Core ELA Curriculum that includes reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary covering all of the ELA standards
• Innovative digital lesson planning software
• Hours of on-demand PD videos
• A community of thousands of supportive ELA teachers from around the world

Pretty incredible, right?Click the link below to add your name to the priority list today:

https://www.ebteacher.com/ebtc-priority-list

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, teachers, I am sure your summer break is just within reach. Some of you might even already actually be on summer break and for those of you who are just like barely hanging on to the end of the year, I know you could probably not be more ready right now to really relax and enjoy your summer, and, quite frankly, we're ready to. I love summer. Summer is one of my favorite things in the entire world, not just because of the weather, but because of everything that we have going on at EB during our summer months. So in just a few weeks, we are actually opening the doors to our brand new app, the EB Teachers ELA Portal, and we really cannot wait to show you the impact that it's going to have on the classroom for anyone who is an EB teacher and a part of the EB teacher ELA portal. So if you choose to join us for that, it's going to be remarkably game-changing in your life as a teacher. So stay tuned for more updates in the weeks to come. I'm also going to include the link to the wait list in the show notes for this episode. And what I will say about our app that's very cool is we have developers integrating our curriculum with our lesson planning software. So I told them when we sat down with this concept. I said I want to make lesson planning go from eight hours to a minute. How can we do that for teachers? And that is what we've set out to do with this brand new app that we are creating.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Okay, so before we dive into summer break, we want you to be able to spend some time focusing on ending this year on a high note and ending it strong with your students. So today, what we're going to talk about is the top three ways to end your year on that high note, but not only that. We want you to really leave yourself prepared to return in the fall. So in a way, that's setting your future self up for success, with just some simple things that you can do and take into the end of the school year. I cannot wait for you to tune into today's episode, and I also can't wait for you to learn more about the EB Teacher ELA Portal as we start to release that into the world come June and July this summer. All right, you guys, let's go ahead and dive in. Hi there, caitlin here.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Our mission at EB Academics is simple Help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks and genuine support so that you can become the best version of yourself both inside and outside of the classroom. So if you think you might be ready to try something new, because you know you simply cannot continue the way that you have been that, I'd invite you to take a moment to check out the EB Teachers Club, the EB Writing Program or the EB Grammar Program by visiting the links in the description of the podcast program or the EB Grammar program by visiting the links in the description of the podcast. We hope to continue to support you within one of our programs in the future and in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast each week. All right, teachers, we are in the last week of May. Some of you might actually be out of school already, I know in certain parts of the country.

Speaker 2: 3:08

You guys are already out right.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Yeah, they're out Crazy, whereas in California it's like mid-June when you get out of school. Okay, so if you're still in school, this is helpful. If you are not still in school, save this for next year. But we're going to talk about three must do's to close out this school year and prepare for for next school year. So it's the end of the year and before you say, like tag, you're at two parents and walk out of your classroom for two months. That makes me think of the Bradley Cooper scene in when he's leaving the class uh, the school is. That isn't the hangover. Is it the hangover? He's like I don't know you. Oh my God, it's brutal, but it's a great scene. It makes me laugh.

Speaker 1: 3:51

So before you do that, there are some habits and routines that you might want to put into place that you can wrap up your current school year knowing that you're really all set to just enjoy the heck out of your summer. So must do number one this was one of my favorites is to just reflect on the school year. So take some time, sit down for 20 minutes, play some gladiator music, you know, play some journaling music or whatever it might be, and really reflect on what worked well and what didn't. In your ELA curriculum, you might consider things like engagement or lesson effectiveness or areas for improvement and bonus points if you do this outside of the classroom, so like you can even do this at home. You can do this while you're on a walk, just thinking about, like really dedicating some time to doing this, as opposed to just like feeling like you got to cram it in after school one day and you just want to get home. I think there's a lot to be said about self-reflection, about self-awareness, about taking just an assessment on what you enjoyed, what you didn't like, what you want to do differently next year, because if nothing changes, nothing changes right.

Speaker 1: 4:52

So if you're someone who takes a lot of pictures in class during the school year, this might be a time to like look back at those pictures. You want to jog your memory of things that happened in the classroom. What are some of like the best memories that you had from that school year? Which one brings just an absolute smile to your face and makes you think, yeah, like I definitely need to make sure that I do that again next year. Maybe something that was just off the cuff and you maybe will forget if you don't write it down that. You did that and it was super effective. So flip through your plan book as well and you can spend a few minutes seeing like if you want to move any units to different parts of the school year, and then you can jot those down on sticky notes so you remember to make those changes come August or the next time that you sit down to batch plan. I actually even did this after every single unit. I was like I did not like this part or I loved this section or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So essentially like you're spending some time highlighting your year, what section or whatever it might be, so essentially like you're spending some time highlighting your year. What do you want to replace? What do you want to replicate? Um, hold on, I have a sneeze, bless you Excuse me. Last one, that was it, Um. And what lessons you want to make adjustments to?

Speaker 1: 6:01

So, as you reflect, I want to give you some questions to use to help you kind of spend this time reflecting. So, what lessons or activities sparked the most interest and engagement amongst your students? Why do you think those activities were successful? Next question what lessons or units seem to pose the most challenges for your students. What could you add in to the lesson to support students the next time? Would moving the unit to a different time of the year possibly be helpful? Next question were there any units or topics that you felt rushed or didn't receive enough attention? How might you adjust pasting or sequencing to ensure thorough coverage of that content? And then the last question to consider is did you effectively incorporate students' interests, their experiences, cultural backgrounds into the curriculum and how could you further diversify and personalize learning experiences in the upcoming year? It could be a simple switch that as you go through this you're like oh my gosh, I'm going to use that next year.

Speaker 1: 7:00

So this all ties really into batch planning and if you haven't batch planned with us before, we host our annual biannual semi-annual.

Speaker 1: 7:09

We do it twice a year, once in the winter and once in the summer, and we are hosting our batch planning live event in August.

Speaker 1: 7:15

If you're interested in joining us, I can share the link for you guys in the show notes. But this all ties into batch planning because when you note these observations or changes that you want to make and have them listed out, then when you sit down to batch plan with us you have these notes to refer to, and it's great, because then this helps you make plans for the next school year that are even more effective and you're not just doing the same thing. Right, a lot of us will do the same thing and expect different results for the next school year, and that just doesn't make sense. If we input the same input, we're gonna receive the same output. We've gotta input something different. So if you haven't signed up for batch planning, live with us yet. That's definitely something that you want to check out. I believe we have an early bird special situation going on too, so you can send me a message on Instagram at ebacademics, and I'm happy to share special coupon code with you guys so you can get a discounted price on that.

Speaker 2: 8:04

I'm also thinking about how easy this will be when our new lesson planning application is available. Yes, yes, I know, because when I would actually do this at the end of the year, I would go ahead and like, put those things that I wanted to keep into my new scope and sequence. So that was done and it was fresh in my mind Well, how simple it'll be when we have that application.

Speaker 1: 8:22

Yes, very simple. I love it, megan.

Speaker 2: 8:25

So the second must do for everyone is to celebrate. We encourage you to celebrate students' accomplishments throughout the year and then definitely at the end of the year, kind of reflecting on the growth they've had, maybe in reading or writing or even extracurricular activities. So recognize students, whether it's a quick personal note, a certificate or a quick mini conference with them, whatever seems most doable and also genuine for you. And don't forget also to celebrate your own achievements. Right, you might go out to dinner with your teacher friends or get a massage or just do something that acknowledges that you too have wrapped up another year in the classroom and you've made an impact on students in the classroom. And so why is this a must-do?

Speaker 2: 9:05

Celebrating students' accomplishments is really vital for boosting their confidence, for motivating them and also building positive relationships in the classroom, which we know builds that classroom culture and just honestly takes care of classroom management when you really know your students well.

Speaker 2: 9:20

So recognizing their achievements, whether it be academic or extracurricular, validates their efforts and then encourages them to continue striving for success. So when you personally recognize students again, it fosters that strong student-teacher bond and then, like recognize students again, it fosters that strong student teacher bond and then, like I said, it contributes to that positive classroom culture where everyone's feeling supported and safe to learn. Moreover, then when you celebrate your own achievement, it helps maintain morale and then prevents burnout right? So acknowledging your dedication and the impact you make reaffirms your passion for teaching and then also helps promote your own professional growth professional growth, excuse me. So it also helps kind of wrap up this year with a nice neat bow and then you're ending on a positive note and then that can allow you the space to then start thinking about next year not right away, but, you know, thinking about those positive things, those fun things that you're going to do for the next year.

Speaker 3: 10:13

Totally, and I'm curious like what you guys did to celebrate, cause I absolutely celebrated at the end of the year.

Speaker 2: 10:21

So our school had a tradition that on the last day of school it was an early out and all of the teachers would go to this like local bar and grill and like everybody came and it was like a really, really fun thing that we did.

Speaker 3: 10:31

So that sounds similar to the school we were at. It was always like an end of the year, like lunch.

Speaker 1: 10:37

And it was super special. Yeah, it was always really nice and the weather was always finally nice too in LA. I mean like June gloom sometimes, but like coming out of spring was always just the best. I love hot weather.

Speaker 1: 10:50

But I'm just thinking about like one of the things that Mr Lehner, the eighth grade teacher at our school, did with the students that I loved was we always had like an end of the year, eighth grade, celebration of them sending them off and every single eighth grade student got some sort of recognition for, like, their contribution to the class throughout that year. So he took the time to sit down and write something about every student and give them a specific award and it was just really special and I think like that's the type of stuff that means a lot to to kids like in their life. You know, I just I remember certain things like that and I think we just have such a unique opportunity as teachers to incorporate things like that that man seems so small but just have such a huge impact on on who they become as people.

Speaker 3: 11:37

Did you know.

Speaker 3: 11:38

Sorry, go ahead, jessica. Oh, I was just going to add on I remember Mr Lehner's awards, cause it was like a big breakfast and all the parents, all the faculty and like he took time on these awards and he always had one and it was I'm probably not going to get the title right exactly, but it was like the cool kid award and like this award, students like strived for it, like they wanted this one. It just meant like you were respectful, you were kind, you were friends with everyone. You were just like an overall cool kid. And I remember in like my favorite class ever, when they were in eighth grade, alana got this award and like part of the award was you got to show up in cool Ray-Bans, because Mr Lehner always wore Ray-Bans and so they both wore them at the same time and so like Alana walked in wearing them and you knew she had gotten the award. It was just so fun to create a tradition like that, yeah, so I think that is a cool way to celebrate students. Sorry, megan, though, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 12:29

No, you're good. Did you guys do an eighth grade cop-out? Is that a thing?

Speaker 3: 12:33

Yes, yes, and, like the seventh grade made this huge sign and we all gathered outside, because eighth grade got out a week before the rest of the school did, and so it was like a big deal, and the siblings were there. I love all these little traditions.

Speaker 1: 12:45

I'm just going to add. One other little thing that I did with my eighth graders for the incoming eighth graders for the next year is I had them take a picture of well, I took a picture of them with holding up their one word that they wanted to impart of knowledge to the next incoming class. So they had a word and then they wrote like a little thing for the incoming eighth graders about what they wanted to like leave as their legacy when they left that following year. So just a cool tradition. I hung it up in the hallway after the eighth graders had graduated and when the seventh graders kind of like graduate into the eighth grade class, for that last week of school before we head out for summer. So just a random little side note.

Speaker 3: 13:25

So fun. All these great things, all these things Making me think I know this is a tangent but at my kid's school, harper is in 4K, right Like preschool, but it's part of the big school and they're doing like special celebration on the last day and the poor girl is like so excited for it but we're skipping that last day of school and I'm like she's like I've hinted at it, but she's like you mean, I'm going to miss water day and I'm like I need to figure out a way to celebrate, you know, finishing the year in a different way. Yeah, all right, must do number three to close out this school year, and this one is to organize your classroom and it's, you know, it's different for every school. Some teachers have to literally put like everything away because the classroom is getting painted or there's work being done on it. Others just need to box up their supplies because maybe they're moving rooms, and some of you might be able to just kind of leave it as is and just empty your fridge, if you have one, and then lock the door and walk out. Well, at the school Caitlin and I taught at, we had a checklist. I'm sure so many schools have this and like we had to get it initialed by the principal or someone in the front office before we could leave for the summer, and it included things like you know report cards have been completed, qm files have been updated, you've turned in your keys or you've signed out that you're keeping them for the summer, you've emptied your desks, like all the things.

Speaker 3: 14:47

So in addition to doing that, there were always additional things I did that I feel like made a really big difference, so I just want to share those with you. Feel like made a really big difference, so I just want to share those with you. So I would actually make my back to school copies for the first week of school in June or in May or whenever we got out. And this was a game changer because once August came, like it was a whirlwind right. There were so many faculty meetings where I was like I just need to be in my classroom working or making a bulletin board or whatever it is. But at least I knew like, okay, well, my copies are done, like I'm technically ready for the first few days of school and I didn't have to think about it. So it was just nice to know that, like those were done, neatly put away.

Speaker 3: 15:26

I also like completely decluttered and cleaned my classroom Like I treated it like a spring cleaning and I know this might seem obvious, but there was a reason for it. So I actually had my students help me with this. You know, there was always a bit of extra time during that last week or so of school where you need to fill it with things. So we cleaned, we dusted bookshelves, we cleaned out the book bins, we reorganized the library, wiped down the shelves in the closet like deep cleaned, threw away broken pencils, highlighters, all the things, and students at least fifth graders, they love this stuff Like they did a better job than I could and it was so helpful because it allowed me to see, like what do I need in terms of supplies for the next school year?

Speaker 3: 16:08

And it was like fresh in my mind. And then what I could do is I could give my list to the front office and, like we were very fortunate, we worked at a school where the school did order supplies for us, and so I know that's not the case for everyone, but either way, it's nice to kind of have a running list of like these are the things I need for the start of the school year so that I'm starting off on the right foot. And so by cleaning and like deep cleaning, it just allowed you to feel like, okay, like Megan said, wrap up that year with a nice neat boat. Now I'm ready, I'm organized for next year.

Speaker 1: 16:38

Yeah, and like you can turn your brain off then too.

Speaker 3: 16:41

Totally. And I think that's huge to a dusty classroom and like, oh yeah you don't.

Speaker 1: 16:45

you don't have an open loop for two and a half months while you're trying to enjoy your vacation by not doing that, um. So if any of these tips resonate with you, let us know over on Instagram. You can also send me a direct message at EB academics on Instagram for more information about our batch planning live event. That's happening August 1st and 2nd of this year. We're sitting down together, we are batch planning. If you don't know anything about batch planning yet, you can actually go download a free copy of our book called the empowered ELA teacher, where we cover all of the things about our batch planning framework, and then for our live event, we basically put it into practice. We hold you accountable.

Speaker 1: 17:22

You're with hundreds of teachers from around the country, across the country, around the world, planning together. So we have an early bird ticket price. I have a special coupon, but send me a message over on Instagram so that I can get that over to you so you can grab a ticket to come join us. So again, that's at EB academics. If you send me a DM, I will be the one to respond to you. So let me know if you have any questions about that.

Speaker 1: 17:44

We would love to have you join us, but we really hope that these kind of must dos to close out the school year, start thinking about next year, really help you close those open loops and be able to close that classroom door and just, man, enjoy the heck out of your summer. We've got a lot of exciting things coming up at EB and we hope that we get to spend just a lot of your summer with you guys. So we will be back in June, in July, on the podcast, talking all about you know, fun things how to get prepared for next school year, lesson planning, engagement all of the things that we normally talk about, so that you can use part of your summer to start to think about next year but in your own time, you know what I mean so you can enjoy your vacation too, because I think that's hugely important for teachers. All right, you guys. Thanks so much for joining us this week on the podcast and we will see you in June. Bye everyone.