Episode 287: Lesson Planning is So 2010 (Just Like Printing Boarding Passes)

On this episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, we dissect the anatomy of a successful lesson plan — a captivating beginning, a standards-focused middle, and an impactful conclusion. This framework not only ensures your lessons flow effectively but also significantly cuts down planning time, allowing you to leave work at work and actually take back your personal time outside the classroom.

After we cover the components of a successful lesson, we spend time guiding you in the steps to take to effectively string together those lessons throughout your entire academic year. We call this process developing your scope and sequence. Once you follow this process and nail down your scope and sequence, you'll find that everything else seems to fall into place extremely easily. You'll even hear from an EB Teacher who tells us how she was able to actually "Kiss the Sunday Scaries goodbye!"

Of course, we want this feeling for every single middle school ELA teacher!

Tune in to this episode to hear more details about how you can easily begin building your scope and sequence now so that you don't have to spend your summer with the weight of back to school on your shoulders!

FREE RESOURCE: Curious about trying Batch Planning this summer? Simply click the link below to grab our 10 Tips to Get Started Batch Planning and take a look at how easy it can be to begin!

https://www.ebteacher.com/free-10-tips-for-Batch-Planning

Batch Planning is the ONE thing you can do now that will have the biggest impact on your entire school year!

BIG NEWS: The EB Teachers' ELA Portal will officially be open for enrollment this summer! If having access to ALL of the items 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

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

All right, welcome everybody. We are so excited because we are diving into our batch planning series here on the podcast for gosh. The next what Jessica? Six, seven episodes, episodes yeah, so exciting. So this is something that we love.

Speaker 1: 0:18

Batch planning is our bread and butter. You know, we've developed our EB batch planning framework over the years and it's something we get asked about all the time. We have a free batch planning guide on social media that we share about a lot, and I constantly get direct messages from people asking for more information about batch planning. And so we sat down and we're like what is going to be the most helpful thing that we can provide for teachers over the summer. That's going to make sense for them. You know we don't necessarily want to be listening to, I don't know, a research paper project in the middle of summer. I mean, maybe we do, but this we felt was just much more appropriate and helpful for things that you can start to pick up and learn in the summertime that are really going to benefit you as you head into next school year. And even you know you can batch plan this summer, which is something that we do with our teachers in the summer is our batch planning live event. So over the course of the next six episodes, you're going to learn the exact steps that we do with our teachers at our batch planning live events. That's actually happening August 1st and 2nd.

Speaker 1: 1:20

If you're interested in learning more about that, you can check out the link in our show notes and grab a ticket to that event. We have speakers. It's actually an incredible event because every year from this event we donate 100% of the profits to a charity called Village Impact. They are a foundation that works with governments in rural communities in Kenya and they provide education for young women. So it's something that we are incredibly passionate about and over the years we've been able to donate, you know, $15,000, $20,000. And this year our goal is to donate $30,000. So the more tickets that we sell, the more that we are able to donate to this incredible cause.

Speaker 1: 2:00

So if you're joining us at Batch Planning, share it with a friend, get somebody else to come with you.

Speaker 1: 2:05

We would love for you to be a part of that experience. But basically, on this podcast series, what we're doing is we're taking what we teach at BPL Batch Planning Live and we're going to break it down over the course of a handful of episodes six episodes for you guys, and the goal with Batch Planning Live, the goal with the whole EB Batch Planning framework is so that really you can learn to plan your lessons at a minimum for a handful of weeks, but for many of our teachers at Batch Planning Live, they'll plan for the entire semester, and some of our more experienced batch planners and Jessica this is where you and I got to when we were in the classroom is we could batch plan for an entire school year in a matter of a couple of days. So that's what we're going to share with you guys. That's what we do at Batch Planning Live. So, yeah, I mean, let's start diving into where we're going to go with this six part series really.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Yes, so we're actually going to paint a little picture for you right now, to get started. So it's 2024, right, obviously, and we've rounded up some things that you should absolutely not be doing anymore. So I want you to think about which of these do you agree with? Waiting in line for tickets at a movie or a concert? Printing out step-by-step MapQuest directions to drive somewhere? Caitlin's like laughing Like I totally did this, like many many years ago.

Speaker 1: 3:28

I am that old also. Yes, right.

Speaker 2: 3:31

I actually remember printing them out once and like it took me to like a dead end street and I was like no, what do I do? I don't know what. I am Another one checking voicemails on a flip phone, like think about the last time you ever left someone a voicemail. This just makes me think of my brother. He went off the grid and got a flip phone because he was so sick of social media and being on his phone. He lasted like 12 days. That is actually really funny.

Speaker 1: 3:55

So, speaking of voicemails, someone from the gym. So there's this really cute dog at the gym who sits outside and I love her, and so I asked the people at the front desk. I'm like, do you know whose dog this is? And they're like no, but we will find out for you. So I see the same gal from the front desk, natalie, like two months later she's like did you get my voice message? I was like no, she's like I left you a voicemail like a month ago about who owns the dog and the breeder that they got the dog out. I'm like, natalie, who's checking voicemails? No, you don't do it Right?

Speaker 2: 4:29

No, um, another one sending a fax, like I remember having a fax machine at the school we worked at together, caitlin, and having to send one one time and I was like I don't know how this works and that was still like many years ago. Another one printing out boarding passes for your flight. Right, I mean, yes, you could do that Some people still do but, like why it takes longer. Your printers may be out of ink, you lose it in the mess of your purse, right, there's like hair ties in there, there's stale peanut butter crackers, like all the things. Like, why bother with that? It was great in 2010, but now it's this unnecessary complication. Right, you can do it so much faster, you can do it so much easier. Just save it to your Apple wallet, you're good to go. So hopefully these get you thinking like, okay, yes, 2010 or 2010, that's how we did things. 2024, like things have gotten significantly easier and better. And it's the same thing with lesson planning for hours every week.

Speaker 2: 5:29

And this last one is one we feel so strongly about at EP that we've developed a whole planning framework that goes against pretty much everything you've likely always done when it comes to lesson planning.

Speaker 2: 5:37

So if you're not jumping on this batch planning bandwagon, then really you're missing out on a whole bunch of stuff, right? You're missing out on free nights and weekends to rewatch Grey's Anatomy to your heart's content. You're missing out on wide open afternoons where you can actually go to the gym or go on a walk or read a book, like whatever you want to do. And you're missing out on lesson plans that really are so intentional and so aligned that you know, like without a shadow of a doubt, that you are rocking your curriculum as in. Like you're confident, you're excited, you're prepared to go in every single day and teach unexpected observation. You're like, yeah, I'm good, bring it on Last minute assembly. That just shifts all your plans. It's like not even an issue for you, or you need a personal day and last minute sub plans Done Like with a click of a button. And all of this comes down to batch planning.

Speaker 1: 6:32

So over the years, you know we've worked with gosh at this point probably. So you know, 10 over 10,000 teachers. I mean, when all is said and done, you think about all of our programs and in working with that many middle school teachers over the years, we've really learned that the single most effective way to get in control of your school year, even when there is chaos around you right, there's a system at play that we don't have control over, but what we do have control over are the things that happen. You know in our classroom that we teach Well, that's not all the time, but most of the time. Right, we have control over of our planning, right, and that is the batch plan. Like that really is a single most effective way to get control of this whole teaching thing.

Speaker 1: 7:16

You know people talk so much about I'm so stressed out, I work so much. I work on the weekends, I work at night. That was me. That's actually why I quit teaching three and a half years into the profession and it doesn't have to be like that. You know, we look at our teachers who are thriving, who you know have made it to the end of their careers. Barbara Pittman just retired from the classroom and you know, invited Jessica to her retirement party because she lives over in South.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Carolina. I just wrote her a congratulations card and put that in the mail yesterday. But it's teachers like that who have said to us you know I wasn't going to be able to make it to the end of the end of my teaching career or I was going to leave the classroom, and they've shared with us that you know, batch planning was one of the catalysts for staying in the classroom and making it to retirement Not like just getting by and just surviving making it to retirement, but actually really thriving and questioning. Do I even want to retire? I'm pretty sure Barbara stayed an extra year in the classroom and she was going back and forth with do I even want to leave the classroom? Because I'm so happy now because I've created this white space in my life because of this concept of batch planning and with our EB batch planning framework, what we do is we center everything around three pillars. So whether or not you're going to plan out a couple of weeks, or you're going to plan out an entire semester or even your whole year, you utilize these three central pillars of our EV batch planning framework in order to batch plan. So the three pillars are you want to have a solid lesson planning framework, which is what we'll talk about on these episodes. Don't worry, you want to make sure that the standards are your North star in your planning. This is like for a lot of teachers that moment of oh my God, that makes so much sense, right, and it's. It's. It's funny, but it's not. And it's like well, of course that's the case, and I think so often we can get distracted by things that we see on social media or things that we're hearing from our district or PDs that we go to, that we start to try all of these different things, but we lose sight of what it is that we should actually be focusing on, which are those standards. And then the last piece of our EV batch planning framework is rinsing and repeating. And if you haven't heard of this concept before, it's something that we'll talk a lot about. So when you use a solid framework for planning your lessons, your weekly lessons can get planned in a matter of minutes or like literally even seconds. You're just looking at your plans making sure okay, got it Sounds good. And especially if you're an EB teacher, it's going to be even faster for you because we are coming out with a brand new portal this summer.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Maybe you guys have seen us talk about this on social media or here on the podcast, but we're coming out with a new app. It includes a lesson planning software just for middle school teachers. And basically what I told our developers when I sat down with them and tried to paint this vision of what I wanted this app to be, I said I want you to take lesson planning or batch planning framework and I want you to take that kind of eight-hour day that we spend with our teachers to batch plan and I want you to make it happen in like two minutes. And they were like okay, so what does that look like? And so we sat down and that's what we've been working on for six months at this point is really creating the software that makes lesson planning so much faster for teachers. So we are very excited about this.

Speaker 1: 10:38

If you want to learn more about that, we have a priority list. We're releasing it on June 26th. If you're a teacher who is a part of any of our programs, you're going to get early access. As an EB Teachers Club member or an EB Writing Program or Grammar Program member, we'll be giving you details on how you can purchase access to our app. But if you're not a part of our world. We are releasing that in July, so I will put a link in the show notes for you guys to add your name to the priority list for that. But that's where the birth of that idea came from is taking this EB batch planning framework and making it even faster and even easier for teachers, and it's very, very exciting, like I feel. Like you talk about I mean, it's not like landing a man on the moon, but you talk about like taking something that is so seemingly impossible and you make it a reality is the coolest thing to witness.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Absolutely. I was talking to I help with our schools division at EB this is Megan and I was talking to a principal about this lesson planning software and she literally said you're taking the hard parts of teaching and making them easier, and I think that's the goal, right. Yes, we're super excited about that. So let's dive in a little bit deeper into our EB lesson planning framework. So you know exactly, with this framework, you know exactly what kind of lesson you need to start your unit with to hook your students. You also know the exact type of lesson you need to do in the middle of the unit to make sure your students have nailed down those standards that you've decided you're gonna cover. And then you also know the perfect lesson that you're going to use to wrap up your unit. Whether we're talking about a novel unit or a grammar unit, writing unit, whatever it is, you have this framework to work from. So a solid lesson framework takes that guesswork out of planning and it also helps eliminate all that wasted time you spend, you know, looking on Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers, wherever it is planning for tomorrow's class period.

Speaker 3: 12:34

But a solid lesson planning framework isn't enough on its own to get in control of your teaching. So this framework really must be rooted in the standards, like Caitlin was talking about, so that your lessons make sense and what you're teaching is actually purposeful and it's what the kids need to be learning. So when the standards become your North Star, then your lessons are no longer just, you know again, a hodgepodge of activities from wherever that use different terminology and expectations and leaves everyone confused. So when you combine a solid lesson planning framework and you use the standards as your North Star, those two things ensure that there's a natural flow to your curriculum and that you're confident and prepared knowing exactly what you're teaching this week, next week, next month, the entire year. But the problem is, even with that solid framework and the standards as your North Star, unless you start rinsing and repeating activities throughout the year, you'll still kind of be slammed with 180 days of content to plan.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Right.

Speaker 2: 13:34

And not to mention there's the building pressure of getting your students to master the standards, all while keeping them engaged and differentiating for them and making sure they show growth on state testing and like answering to your admin and like the list goes on. Right, that pressure just mounts, starting on day one of school, it seems even before, honestly. So rinsing and repeating lessons is critical in order to get in control of your teaching right, and it all comes back to batch planning. That's just one component of it. But if you think about it, if you only rinsed and repeated lessons based on the standards but you didn't rely on that solid lesson planning framework like EBs, then the time it takes you to lesson plan just gets longer and longer. Right, we all know that rabbit hole that Megan was talking about and we know how easy it is to get distracted. And then you're kind of just putting plans down and you're like, are these even like what I should be doing? Like you just kind of get lost in it and you're like, yeah, okay, I guess that's what I'll teach, right, and it becomes this guessing game of what gets to be taught and when. And it becomes this guessing game of what gets to be taught and when. But think about this Like, what if it didn't have to be that way? What if you could easily use a lesson planning framework, like we have with the into, through and beyond, and you know exactly that each lesson is tied to the standards. Rinsing and repeating is again as easy as a click of a button and you're good to go. Like Caitlin said, it can all be done now in a matter of minutes, often even seconds when you get really good at it.

Speaker 2: 15:03

Because it's 2024, right, there's no reason, like we said earlier, that you should be lesson planning like you used to do. It should be easy this time, so that you can get back to doing what you do best, and that's being in the classroom, that's teaching your students. Right, that's where the magic happens, not in sitting at home with your plan book in front of you. So there is no reason in 2024 that you should be leaving school when it's dark or spending Sunday afternoons just piecing together your hodgepodge of lessons and just kind of crossing your fingers. You're like, yeah, I hope my students like this, I hope it's effective. So, whether you batch plan over one weekend or you map out your year in seconds, right, With this new EB portal. It's 100% time to completely cut the following out of your life.

Speaker 2: 15:49

So I want you to commit to this as you're listening to this get rid of spending your Sunday afternoons searching online for lessons trying to figure out what are the standards, what are my learning targets, what are my essential questions, what are my assessments. Stop doing that all Sunday. There are better uses of your time. Right? Stop scrambling on Monday morning to print out copies for your last minute TPT purchase and just cross your fingers like I hope this makes sense. I kind of skimmed through it. I hope we're good to go tea purchase and just cross your fingers like I hope this makes sense. I kind of skimmed through it. I hope we're good to go. Stop staying until 6 pm every Thursday to put everything in Google Classroom, including the standard, the objective, the academic vocabulary, a do now guided practice, independent practice, an exit ticket right, Knowing full well that your plans are probably going to change anyway. Right, Because something's going to come up.

Speaker 1: 16:36

Yeah. So I don't know about you guys, but like I don't want to do that for sure. That's one of the reasons why I left the classroom when I did, and when I came back, I'm like, look, if I'm going to be happy as a teacher, something is going to have to drastically change. And so that's what I did, is I got rid of and just completely eliminated this old way of lesson planning, and so if you're like, okay, I get it, you guys have convinced me. I'm done with the old way of lesson planning, I'm done feeling this burnout and I'm ready to actually take control of what I can do in the classroom. And you are ready to be a teacher who thrives. Every single day that you wake up, you love going to school, you're excited to go to school, and the thing about this that I think is so important that I think sometimes we don't we we talk about, but not as in depth as we we maybe could is what batch planning does is, yes, it frees up plan or time from your life to be able to go to the gym or read a book to your kids or you know, whatever it might be. Do the things in the pockets of time that you now have, that you didn't have before. But I think, more than anything, it frees up that mental white space to not be thinking about teaching all the time, and when something is not always ruminating in your mind, it creates just this next level of peace that just didn't exist before, on like a subconscious level. So, even if you're not consciously aware of the fact that you're thinking about school all the time, on a subconscious level you absolutely are. If you have any open loops like hanging over your head right, and so this closes so many of those loops, like on Friday, when I would leave after I started batch planning, I would leave school Friday with literally not think about school until I got to school Monday morning, to the point that I would be like, oh crap, what am I teaching today? But I had it all like laid out on my desk for myself, because Friday me like took care of Monday me and I looked at it. I'm like, oh yeah, that's right, here we go. And so it was like such a shutoff that I didn't even think about school and it was such an incredible, freeing experience to have that level of peace in your life on just this subconscious level.

Speaker 1: 18:52

So what we're going to talk about today specifically is step one of batch planning from our EB batch planning framework. And step one is your scope and sequence. And the scope and sequence is where you write down all of the content that you want to cover throughout the school year. So we're or you know whatever period of time you're going to batch plan for. So we're going to talk maybe through the lens of the school year, but you can think about that for a semester, a trimester, a quarter, a month, two weeks, whatever period of time you're planning on sitting down to batch plan for. So the scope and sequence includes every single unit, standard test activity, et cetera. So scope and sequence has basically everything at a high level overview. It's your roadmap for the entire school year and once you have it completely filled out, you should be able to pull out your scope and sequence pick any day of the year and you'll know exactly what you would be teaching on that particular day.

Speaker 1: 19:53

So when we actually set out to create our physical planner, so we have a physical EB teacher planner. If you're an EB teacher and you're interested in that, let us know in our EB community and we'll share information with you about that. But when we planned the creation of that planner, the very first part of that planner is the scope and sequence. So, like, we built the planner with this framework in mind, because a planner is not going to make the difference, it's the way in which you plan that makes the difference right. So you could buy any planner that you want, but you've got to know how to harness the power of planning in the planner for the planner to be effective. And that's why we put the scope and sequence at the beginning of our planner is because it's so integral to the success of your batch planning that you can't skip this part. The rest of the batch planning framework does not exist without a scope and sequence.

Speaker 1: 20:46

So when we're talking about your scope and sequence with this very first step this is the simplest part, what I'm going to share with you right now. So when you sit down with your scope and sequence, you should also have your school calendar out with you, and this is where we start. This is what we suggest all of our teachers start with at batch planning. Live is you sit down with your school calendar, you sit down with your scope and sequence and you can pencil in first all holidays, all school assemblies, all field trips that you know of all early dismissals, when report cards are due, like anything that the school is giving you, like these are mandated dates that have to happen. You want to get all of those written down into your scope and sequence first so that you can strategically build your units around them. So if you have report cards due on October 29th, you don't want to have essays due on October 28th because you can't get them into the report cards the next day, unless you're just I don't know like superhero status. Maybe you could, but no one wants to do that to themselves. That's an unnecessary level of pressure. So you're thinking about your plans in regards to, like, the holistic overview of what's happening within the school year in terms of events. So after you've done that with your school calendar, that's the first step. Very simple, very easy get you going some quick wins right away. Right, everybody can do that. Then you're gonna ask yourself some questions and I'm gonna list them out for you. You can write these down if you're not driving, and if you are driving, come back and listen to this later. So these are some of the questions that we provide for our teachers at Bash Planning Live.

Speaker 1: 22:25

So what novel units do you want to teach this year? And if you don't teach novel units, perhaps these are, you know, just shorter reading units, like we have in our curriculum. We have some shorter reading units in conjunction with novel units too. So what novel units do I want to teach this year? What bigger reading units do I want to teach this year, and how long do I expect those to take? So if I'm teaching the outsiders, does the outsiders do I plan on that taking me a month? Is that going to take me five weeks? However long you think it's going to take you? Okay? And this is where, like you might suck when you sit down to do this initially, and then you'll get better and better over time, you might realize, oh my God, the outsiders actually takes me seven weeks. Maybe I'm going to cut some stuff out next time, so it doesn't take me as long, right? So this is like you might not do this very well the first time you do it, and that's 100% acceptable, reasonable and to be expected. So just as a kind of caveat warning as we head into this so how long do I expect those units to take?

Speaker 1: 23:28

Then you're also going to think about if you're a writing teacher too. What writing units do you need to cover? Do you need to cover a certain writing style for your state tests? Narrative writing for some states. For other states it's multiple texts that they need to teach to their students and how to respond to those. So what are the big writing units that you need to cover? Then you also want to ask yourself, you know, are there any major projects that I plan on doing with my students? Perhaps there's a research paper project at the end of the year? Or, like some of our teachers do, we have an entrepreneur expo that a lot of our teachers do as a part of our curriculum. So what are those bigger projects that you're planning on doing with your students? And then I also invite you guys to ask yourself this question you know, is there a particular unit that is going to work better at the beginning of the year than at the end of the year, or vice versa? You know I always share this at Batch Planning Live.

Speaker 1: 24:19

When I taught eighth grade, I taught night to my students. I saved that for the end of the year After I knew my students. We created a safe environment to learn. We were able to have difficult conversations. They were more mature. I could not have taught that at the beginning of the school year to my eighth grade students. So there are just going to be inherently certain texts or certain things that work better in different times of the school year, and that's up for you to decide.

Speaker 1: 24:46

And then I also want you guys to ask yourself this question are there any writing units and novel units that pair well together? So, for example, I always taught, we always taught our teachers. You know, if you teach House on Mango Street, teach it at the beginning of the year and also teach narrative writing at the same exact time, because there's so much figurative language. Cisneros is just this incredible writer of stories. What a great example for our students to be reading as they are learning about narrative writing. So be thinking about that too. You know what types of writing and novel or reading units go well together that you could teach at the same exact time.

Speaker 1: 25:25

So when you're asking yourself these questions, you're also looking at your scope and sequence, and this allows you to be really intentional with your planning. Right, you're not simply starting a unit because you suddenly realized, oh my God, I need another book to teach. Right, because you just finished teaching house on mango street and you're like, okay, what's next? And then you, you know, find something on TBT or whatever. We don't want to do that. That's not planning intentionally. A scope and sequence really forces you to break that way of thinking, really forces you to do that. And so once you consider these questions, you can start to with a pencil. Right, because it might change. That's why we say, pencil it in. You can pencil in your big units into your scope and sequence and at this point, like I said, it's just this high level overview. It's like the 30,000 foot view.

Speaker 1: 26:11

If you're teaching the outsiders, you would literally just block off the outsiders for however many weeks on your scope and sequence. And you're just saying the outsiders, you're not saying what it is necessarily, yet that's happening on any given day. You're just writing out and blocking out those chunks of time that, hey, the outsiders is being taught during those weeks. So if you're an EB teacher, this part of the batch planning stage is going to be so easy for you in the new software because literally you can just select dates and then go select the unit from our curriculum that you're going to be teaching and the software is going to pull in all of the information from that unit. The standards are going to be listed there, the skills that you're teaching are going to be listed there.

Speaker 1: 26:54

It's just I mean, it's remarkable. It's really like I can't even handle how cool it is. So that's going to be super simple for you guys, and what we've done at EB if you are an EB teacher and you're going to be a part of the EB teachers ELA portal is we created our own scope and sequence at EB. So if you want to use our suggestions for fifth grade, that's already going to be loaded into the platform for a lot of you so that you can just make changes to our suggested scope and sequence based on your school calendar. So we're just trying everything that we can to make planning literally as simple as possible so you can just enjoy teaching.

Speaker 3: 27:30

Quite frankly, and to Caitlin's point of penciling stuff in, it is really important not to overthink this scope and sequence part, because it's truly a living and breathing document. You're probably going to make changes and that's okay and I would say it's probably encouraged, honestly. So at this point you're really just getting your big unit plans again penciled in, being mindful of where they best fit into your year. So, for example, just you know, thinking about how this all works together, you don't really want to be in the middle of a writing unit when winter break begins Not ideal, right. So rather you might want to finish that writing unit maybe like a week before break. That gives you time to grade your essays, because you also don't want to be grading essays over your break. So just things like that to think about. So that's really step one of batch planning laying out that scope and sequence at your very high level.

Speaker 3: 28:19

So we're actually going to wrap up this episode with a little bit of motivation from Leslie and she is one of our EB teachers. She wanted to share with us what she felt the power of batch planning was for her and her colleague Kayla. So this is what Leslie said I did not realize what a relief batch planning was going to bring us for the school year. By having all our standards, units and activities planned for every day, we basically eliminated any added stress in our lives and we freed up every weeknight and weekend we had for our families.

Speaker 3: 28:50

Not once have we ever felt that we didn't know what to do the next day, week or month. We no longer have anxiety Sundays. It is such a blessing that after a combined 62 years of teaching, we are excited about learning and we feel like it is the first time we actually get it. We feel like we have been good teachers, but now we have discovered a whole other level to our teaching that we didn't know existed within us. So we hope that gets you super pumped. It gets me super pumped. I mean that's, that's really fun.

Speaker 1: 29:20

Freaking awesome. I love it. Sorry, go ahead, megan. No, yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:26

We hope that gets you pumped for batch planning. Um, and just just try some of these experiences and get these same experiences as Leslie and Kayla have. Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1: 29:36

I mean, I just love it, like, and that's the thing most like. It's it's not easy, but like, the first step is to be a good teacher, right, and that's the thing Most like. It's. It's not easy, but like, the first step is to be a good teacher Right, and that comes with, like, okay, some classroom management skills, some organizational skills. You know your content matter, all that stuff Right, and if you're there and it's like, okay, but like, I am really struggling to be a good teacher in terms of time management, in terms of how much time I'm dedicating to my classroom, just to be a good teacher Right, I can't imagine what it takes to be a great teacher, and I think we see these like narratives and we then create this belief that like, okay, being a great teacher means that I've got to wake up first thing in the morning, before the sun even rises, and get to school two hours before everybody else and have all this crazy stuff in my whatever.

Speaker 1: 30:20

You know, I just, I just think about some of the things that were shown to me in my master's program.

Speaker 1: 30:25

I remember a video that they showed us of this teacher who literally dedicated his life to teaching, which is totally fine, that's fine and I'm happy for him and it was wonderful and he was a great teacher. And that can't be the only narrative of the expectation of what it means to be a great teacher. You can be a great teacher and get to school at 730, get your stuff ready to go and right before the bell rings you're good right and leave school at 330 because you planned, and I really think that all comes back Truly, I truly believe this to batch planning, like it is such a fricking game changer to be able to be a great teacher, but not through the lens of what we see all the time on social media or in just the narrative of education that it's got to look like this. That is not true at all and in fact, jessica and I were both not to toot our own horn, but we were both awarded teacher of the year on the year that I probably worked the least when it came to teaching Right.

Speaker 2: 31:20

And I'm thinking Caitlin to add to that. Like it can be a little hard to take that first step when that's your school culture, right, if everyone is staying late and now it's like, great, okay, I do want to leave at three, and that was 100% me. Like I left school when that bell rang. I was walking out with the kids. But like, at some point, if you want things to change, you got to do something right. And I guarantee you, all of a sudden it's going to start to happen. The other teachers are going to say, okay, well, how are you able to leave a three? You have the highest test scores, you're not stressed, the kids all love being in your class. The parents, like, want you as the teacher, all of it.

Speaker 1: 31:54

Right, it's going to happen when you start to make the changes, because you fall in love with teaching again you're not so stressed out Totally and I really I believe I mean it starts with like a belief shift that it doesn't have to look like X, it can look like ABCDEFG, all the other ways right. It doesn't have to look like the way that we've always been taught. And, jessica, I remember when I first came to visitation where we taught together and you would leave at three, I'm like what the hell is she doing? I was like mad at you. I'm like a teacher.

Speaker 3: 32:28

Right, I didn't do that. My first year, right.

Speaker 2: 32:30

But then I was like, okay, this is not sustainable, totally, totally.

Speaker 1: 32:34

No.

Speaker 2: 32:34

I had to get home to my son, get to the beach like, do all the fun things.

Speaker 1: 32:38

Totally and like, yes, and like. That's the thing is, we have to. I think release in this could be a whole other episode, but like any amount of guilt that comes from the fact that I'm leaving at three and I'm going to go sit at the beach and I'm going to enjoy this without having to feel like, oh, I should be doing something else to be a better teacher. To be a better teacher, because that does doing more does not make you a better teacher at all. Nope, it's. What can we do intentionally, right? The whole concept of like. Is the juice worth the squeeze? Well, the juice of batch planning is really worth the squeeze, right? Boom, boom. Okay.

Speaker 1: 33:20

So next week we're going to talk about step two of batch planning. Step one is the scope and sequence. Step two is using your standards as your North star to make sure that your lessons are intentional and aligned. So we will be back next week to talk all about that. Hope this episode was helpful for you guys and if it was, let us know over on social media at EB academics, send us a direct message and I will be the one to respond to you. Thanks, you guys. We'll see you next week on the podcast. Bye everyone, bye.