Teaching Middle School ELA
Welcome to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, where we are dedicated to helping English Language Arts teachers create dynamic and engaging lessons for their students, while also managing the day-to-day responsibilities that come with being a Middle School ELA teacher.
As educators ourselves, we understand the challenges of finding a work-life balance that allows us to pursue our passion for teaching while also enjoying our personal lives. That's why each Tuesday, hosts Caitlin Mitchell and Jessica Cannata share practical and innovative solutions for managing your workload and staying inspired in your teaching practice.
Whether you are looking for fresh ideas to inspire your students, strategies for improving your writing instruction, or tips for managing your time more effectively, this podcast is designed to provide you with the tools you need to thrive as a Middle School ELA teacher.
Join us each week for curriculum and lesson ideas, classroom stories, and interviews with fellow educators who are experts in the field. We believe that with the right support and resources, you can create a classroom environment that encourages students to become strong and passionate learners.
If you teach reading and writing to middle schoolers and want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in ELA education, then this is the podcast for you! Tune in every week and let us help you make a difference in the lives of your students and in your own teaching career.
Teaching Middle School ELA
Mindset Favorite: Discipline
Today’s Monday Mindset is one of our listeners’ favorite past episodes all about discipline. I highlight the value of discipline in both our work and personal lives, discussing how our future selves will thank us when it comes to practicing discipline. I challenge listeners to identify areas in their own lives where discipline may be lacking, and I encourage you to make a commitment to yourself. By keeping promises to ourselves, we build self-confidence and begin to see positive results in our lives.
Here’s to another day of living intentionally.
Well, hello teachers, and welcome to your Monday Mindset podcast episode. These are short, little snippets of thoughts, reflections that I share with you on a weekly basis, that are focused around mindset things that we can do to live our best lives, to live an intentional life, and I invite you to not just listen to these for yourself and how they apply to you in your life, but consider sharing them with other people too. Consider sharing them with your students every Monday and having a conversation about it and doing a reflection together, because I think a lot of these thoughts, these topics, these questions are just a part of being human, and sometimes being human can feel lonely and to know that other people are struggling through some of the same challenges that you are and are benefiting from having these types of conversations is hugely powerful in allowing us to get to be the best version of ourselves, to take who we are and who we be and who we show up in the world as to that next level. So I really hope that you enjoy these Monday Mindsets and, if you do, let us know over on our Instagram at Evie Academics. Thanks so much for listening and let's dive into our Monday Mindset. Do you ever have those moments in your life where things just keep showing up again and again and again. It's like the universe is telling you pay attention with big flashing lights.
Speaker 1:And the one that has been showing up for me so much that I want to talk about today is in discipline. I talked about this on the last Monday Mindset episode, about a book I'm reading, listening to. That is by Alan Stein, and it's called Sustain your Game, and a lot of it is. He talks about the great athletes of our time. Right, we're talking Kobe, steph, michael Jordan, whoever it is and so many of them are so great at what they do because they have the discipline to continue practicing the basics, the fundamentals of the sport. Right, it's not some hidden thing or some best kept secret or whatever it might be to be the best at what they do. It's because they are disciplined to show up each day, every day, and work on those fundamentals, to work on pivoting, to work on passing drills, to shoot 100 freaking threes in 30 minutes or whatever it is, but they are disciplined to do the things that they know is going to make them better. And so I'm noticing this show up in my life in a lot of different ways. One, of course, working out. It's so easy to translate it to that discipline of going to the gym when you don't necessarily want to go. But it's also more than that. It's like discipline in our decision making. It's discipline in how we show up for our family. It's discipline in how you show up for yourself with school as a teacher, and I think that it really aligns to what we're talking about right now on a regular Tuesday podcast episodes about batch planning, right?
Speaker 1:So many of us probably don't want to sit down and batch plan, just like I sometimes don't want to sit down and do my to-do list, or I don't want to make my bed, or I don't want to put my clothes away. That's something I'm still working on. Ask my Virgo husband, who is probably listening to me record this and is smiling as I say it. But there are certain things like that that if we do them, if we can stay disciplined enough with ourselves to do them, we are going to create something for ourselves in terms of confidence and our ability to continue to do them. Oh, that feels good. Oh, I noticed that when I do this, I feel X about myself, and I think the same thing goes with batch planning where you might not want to do it. You might not want to sit down and spend eight hours on a Sunday planning for two months. That probably maybe for some people sounds fun. To me it certainly doesn't. However, I know that if I'm disciplined enough with myself to do that, I'm going to walk away from that eight-hour day feeling exponentially better about myself, exponentially more confident in my ability to do it again, in my future self thanking me.
Speaker 1:So sometimes what I've been doing to help myself with this discipline, when I don't want to do it, is, I ask myself, what will my future self thank me for? What will my future self thank me for? Will my future self thank me for being like meh, I'm not gonna do it? Or is my future self gonna thank me for? You know what? Caitlin, thank you so much for being disciplined and sitting down and getting that done so that two months from now, on a Sunday night, I'm actually spending time with my friends and family as opposed to lesson planning or if it's talking about working out. My future self is gonna thank me. Thank you so much for showing up to that boxing class at 7 30 am that you didn't want to go to, but I'm glad that you did that for yourself.
Speaker 1:So I invite you to think about areas in your life where discipline in doing the things that you don't necessarily want to do is going to help move you forward toward the things and the life that you do want. Because we can wish and want our way to whatever all we want, but guess what? Nothing is going to happen. It's in the doingness, in the discipline of the doingness, that gets us those results, where we start to see those successes that we do want.
Speaker 1:So I invite you to think about those areas of your life that are lacking discipline, where you can apply them. Pick one, pick one. Make your bed every day, be disciplined in doing that. Or work out every day, move your body every day, whatever it is. You make that commitment to yourself and as soon as you make that commitment, that's it. There's no taking it back, because then you are keeping promises to yourself and when you do that, you build confidence in yourself and you start to see your life, in those small, disciplined decisions, start to change. All right, I hope that this serves you well. Let me know over on Instagram at EBacademic, send me a direct message if you listened and you loved it. And with that being said, here's to another great week living intentionally.