Well, hello. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy that you're here. Oh my gosh, how cool is it to hang out with motivated educators who want to have a positive experience. Nothing better than that. So in this week's episode, I'm gonna go through the one thing you need to do before school is in to set yourself up.
for success. And that is not hype. Like, do not go back to school without doing this. And if you are back in school, I don't think you are, right? I, I hope I timed this right. But if you are back in school, it's not too late. Go do this now. Okay. We're going to talk about having a complete boundary plan. What are the six elements of a perfect Boundary plan.
You may never have thought of that before. It might be something that you just casually make up as you go along through the school year. But in my mind, that is a mistake. Set yourself clear with the boundaries you're going to set in these six areas so that you know how to start the year, knowing what those are.
and effectively knowing how to communicate them in a loving way that will set everybody up for success. I can't wait to get to it. Go grab your notepad, go do whatever you need to do, bookmark this, save it, come back to it when you're sitting in a place where you can give it some time and attention, but I will see you on the inside with the six.
Parts of the perfect boundary plan for teachers. You're not going to want to miss it. Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance. If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, You have found your home in the podcast universe.
I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show.
Now, if you've been keeping up with the plot the last few weeks, you may know that I am having a Oh, it's kind of like I don't want to say a love hate relationship, but I'm having all the feels seeing all the back to school stuff inside the stores. Part of me is getting pangs of like, oh, I miss setting up my classroom.
I miss doing it all. I just loved it. I, I just loved all that stuff. The other part of me is so relieved to think that, you know, I'm still in control of my time and my schedule. It was never. About not wanting to be with kids that I stepped out of the classroom, it was wanting to have an impact in a greater way for teachers, because I felt if I could influence and help the teachers, then that in the end would help me have more impact for students.
But it was also this fact that I needed a different schedule. I had been tied to a school schedule for over two decades, and I really just needed a little bit more flexibility in my schedule for lots of personal reasons. And so I'm not willing to give that up, but, oh man, I get all the feels when I see the back to school stuff.
I'm telling you, I loved school. In fact, I was thinking the other day, I can still remember. Every year, how I started school, every year, now, of course, it made sense when I was in first grade, second grade, but even third and fourth, like, really, is this the way to start it? I always started with Lily's purple plastic purse.
Do you know that story about the mouse? And she Anyway, she makes some poor choices and at the end, the moral of the story is, today was a hard day, tomorrow will be better. Okay, so that's something we need to remind ourselves constantly in the classroom, not just us, but our students too, right? Hey, today was a tough day, tomorrow will be better, but I just love the way it starts and it starts like this and I don't even need to look because I know how it starts because it was me.
It starts with Lily loved school. She loved the pointy pencils, she loved the squeaky chalk and she loved the way her boots went clickety clickety clack down the long shiny hallways. I loved school. I loved setting up that classroom and all those years that I, you know, talked about this a couple of episodes ago about the classroom themes and all the care and the love in setting up the classroom.
That really was my joy. My kids knew how to do it. One year I was not there for the beginning of school. Regrettably my father had died in England. I needed to go home and my kids Teenagers went in and set up my classroom before school started. They knew how to do it. They knew how to make all the pencil cases for everybody and the labels and all the things.
So anyway, so all of that, all the feels, but what's the point? The point is I spent so much time worrying about those things. I invested more time in having those themed labels on everything and laminated than I did in setting myself up with intentionality to do it. To protect my peace, to protect my energy and make sure that I had a good experience for the year.
And how should I have done that? That would have been through setting up a boundary plan. So we're going to talk about the six elements. Now, listen, in my elevated teacher experience my membership, one big module that people can do anytime. There's a whole module on setting boundaries. And overcoming boundaries, misconceptions, and best practices, and scripts, and all the things, but it culminates in setting up a boundary plan, and it is ideally done at the beginning of the year, but it's, you can update your terms and conditions at any point during the year.
How many times does iOS update? You need a new update. You know, we're updating on terms and conditions. So if you're not listening to this at the beginning of the year when I'm recording it, it's okay. You can go back and set yourself up a boundary plan anytime in the year. Now in my membership, I encourage people with our monthly coaching coaching sessions.
Hey, send it to me. Let's look at it. Let me coach you on it. Let's see. Where do you need some help? What are some areas you might've missed? So if that's something you're interested in You know where to find me on that. If there wasn't an intro, you can look at that at any time at gracestephens.
com forward slash elevate. That will tell you all about the membership, but in the meantime, I'm going to give you everything you need now to get started. Okay. So hopefully you bookmark this or you're sitting ready with your pen and pencil because there are six areas. Now, probably the one area you've already thought about with your boundary plan is how are you going to set boundaries on your time?
I think. That's where a lot of people go. Okay. They're like, okay, here's my boundary. Right. And we know well enough, if you've been listening to me for any amount of time, that boundaries is about your behavior, not about controlling other people, not about you know. Trying to, you know, what other people are going to do things without your control.
It's about your behavior. What are you going to do? How are you going to show up? And so I think the first thing is setting boundaries on your time. A lot of people do this part. So that's good. Maybe you tell yourself, you know, I will not work weekends, right? And I will not stay after such and such an hour, you know, These are things I won't do.
Now, I'm going to go through the plan. So you know, you should have thought about these things and you should think about how you're going to communicate these things. Obviously, the best way, time, to communicate them is a back to school night with parents. And just matter of fact, matter of fact, my hours are this, I answer emails between this time and that time, and that's it, matter of fact, just as, you know, the classroom policy is.
Okay, you know, Oh, we use Google Classroom. I do not. If you email me, you can expect to reply within X amount of hours, right? Just set the expectation, manage the expectations, but know what they are for yourself and know what your district policy is. Probably your district has a policy on that. So, on setting boundaries on your time, that in itself is a huge.
A huge area. So I'm going to suggest a couple of episodes where I do a deep dive in this. Okay. Cause I want to go over these six areas because I think people stop at number one, which is setting boundaries on their time. I want to talk a little about, about the other five, but if you need setting boundaries on your time, sorry about that.
Dropped something. There is a couple of episodes that will be really helpful. One is episode 17. Go back to that episode and listen to the five misconceptions that are setting you, holding you back in setting boundaries. You know, you feel maybe you need a mindset shift. You think that maybe they're about other people's behavior.
You fear of how you're going to be judged. All the things that are holding you back, right? You're a people pleaser. It's just in your nature. You feel like setting boundaries is, is not comfortable for you. Go listen to episode 17. A ton of wisdom in there and strategies about overcoming misconceptions.
Okay. And then the other episode to listen to will be real helpful is the one, it's not too long ago, where I talk about how you can say no to. Extra duties, even the ones in your area of expertise. So that is episode 48. Tips for teachers, how to reject extra duties in your area of expertise without feeling guilty.
Okay, so that was about the strategy of yes and. So not just saying no to extra duties, maybe they're random duties that have nothing to do with you, supervising a dance or a sport or being on some curriculum committee or a safety committee, you know, all those things. But what if The thing that's really wearing you out is all the extra duties that are attached to your job.
Let's say you're the music teacher putting on all the concerts. Let's say you're the science teacher putting on science fair, putting on science Olympiad, like all those things. Okay, how do you set boundaries on that? Those strategies are yes and. Yes, I'm going to do it because it's part of my job. And here are some things I need to help me be successful and how you set boundaries that way.
So that is episode 48, where I do a deep dive in that. Okay. Because I don't want this episode to, you know, go into two hours and lose you. So if you really need help setting boundaries on your time, then look at those two episodes. and 48. Okay, so that's number one, setting boundaries on your time. But here are the other, I'm going to talk about the other five areas that probably you haven't thought about that need to be on a boundary plan.
And when I say a boundary plan, you know, it doesn't, it's a living document. You're going to update it as you go. As things come up, you can add to it. It just needs to be a word doc or something, but write it down. Don't just wait till the moment. Give it some intentionality. And then if you have a kind of document that you can look at, you can go back and say, Hey, you can keep yourself accountable and you can check in when you're starting to feel overwhelmed and really feeling like resentment and burnout is showing up for you.
Let me go look at my boundary plan. Am I saying, what am I doing? Am I living up to it? In a way that I said I would. So, boundary number one, setting boundaries on your time. Huge issue, right? Average U. S. teacher donates 15 hours of their time, unpaid, Each week, put that in over the course of a year, it's thirteen and a half weeks.
We've done the math many times. Alright, so area number two. What about boundaries on your space? Physically, how are you going to separate work from home? Okay, how are you going to do that? So, do you have some kind of closing ritual? Right? Do you have a rule that you don't bring your laptop home with you?
Right back in the day, we would be carrying around our huge cart with our teacher editions that weighed a ton, you know, now it's all digital, we can lesson plan at home, parents have access to us at home on email, even if we don't bring our own laptop home. You know, it's on our phone, right? Our emails, our parent communication apps, all those things.
How are we going to separate that? How are we going to, you know, I always had a room, my rule, my work bag never came in the house. I would leave it in the garage. It didn't come in the house. Then when there were times that I really needed to work in the house, thinking COVID it would only be my office had a very strict rule for myself that my laptop or my work never came in the bedroom.
How am I, you know, I'm going to be engaged with my family when I'm home. I don't want to be, you know, okay. Some things that are kind of. Low level thinking activities, scrolling on Pinterest, finishing up a slide deck, putting in grades. They don't take a huge cognitive load. Are we doing those in front of the television?
When our partner or kids are sitting next to us, like how are we going to separate that? Okay, physically. Boundaries on your space, physically. And, this is a huge piece, how are you going to separate school from home mentally? Right, this whole idea of vicarious trauma, that we bring home kids trauma, that we worry about stuff.
What's your strategy? What's your plan? How are you going to set boundaries on that? Okay? So, number one, setting boundaries on our time. Number two, setting boundaries on our space. Work happens at work. Home happens at home. Okay? Number three, and the next three, Hmm, yeah. Or all about setting three or four are setting boundaries with people.
So the first one is parents. How am I gonna set boundaries with parents, parents who feel so entitled to my time all of the time and my energy? And here is good news. Next week I'm doing a whole episode just in time for back to school, an open house for some of you back to school night on. How to have positive relationships with parents, and so much of that boils down to setting up positive expectations.
Now an excellent way is managing a parent communication app and I'll talk about that in depth next week. But what is your policy with parents? My policy always was you need to have an appointment with me, barring an emergency. Now if it is an emergency, Guess what? There are people in the office who can help you.
If you have an emergency with a parent at two o'clock in the afternoon, I'm teaching. What do you expect me to do with that? Right? So but I found especially teaching lower grades, it was a big, you know, that, that we used to call it the front gate conference. You know, if you teach younger children, usually at some point you have responsibility to even get them on the bus or to do the pickup line, hand them off to their parents as cars drive through, or people come to your door to get them or to escort them to afterschool, whatever.
You usually have some kind of duty that is making sure kids get where they need to go safely. And when that parent shows up and wants to have the conference right there and then, what is your policy? And your policy should be Hey, I would really love to help you, but I'm on my way to a meeting, but I have other responsibilities right now.
Hey, I really care about confidentiality. I can't have a discussion with you at the gate. Pop me an email. Let's find a time we can talk about this. Okay. It's for reasons of confidentiality. It's for reason of being consistent. If you talk with one parent and then another day, you really do have a meeting with so many responsibilities after school, and I think, you know, it's just an education thing.
Parents just don't know that. They think when the bell goes, we're done. We're making a cup of tea and, you know, cleaning up our room. They don't know that we're running off to other meetings, other committees, tutoring, all the things, right? So then it becomes a consistency issue. If you meet with one and not with another, then parents start talking and they're going to start thinking you're playing favorites.
Okay. So what. Is your policy. I would not meet with parents who just showed up at my door before school or after school. And again, if they felt it was truly an emergency, then I would direct them to the office. And I know that that can be controversial, but there is a loving you know, and professional way to do that.
And we'll go over some of those strategies next week. So that's number three. Are you with me so far? Number one, on your boundary plan, boundaries on your time. Number two, Boundaries on your physical space, school at school, home at home. Boundaries number three, with parents. You want to know what your policy is, you want to communicate your policies, and you want to be consistent in your policies.
Okay, so that's three parts of your boundary plan. Four. What is your plan for co workers? Which people you need to work with? Part five is how you're going to avoid people you do, who drag you down. But number four is there are people you need to work with on your team, part of your grade span, part of your department that you need to work with.
And yes, you need to have a plan on how you're going to work with them. What is going to be a fair delegation of duties? Okay. Are you going to have boundaries on how much time, you know, there's always that one extra person who wants to always, you know, do so much. And it's just draining you all. Maybe they don't, maybe their whole life is school.
Well, yours should not be. Okay, you should have a full and beautiful life and school should be a great part of it, but it shouldn't be all of it. So maybe if you've got that co worker who's quite happy working 60 hours a week and expecting the same of you, how are you going to set boundaries with them?
Even your teacher bestie. You know when you've been so excited to finally get a prep period and then your bestie comes in and you start chatting and before you know it, you have, your whole prep period is gone and it's gone on nothing just about complaining about other people or gossiping or doing whatever, which there is a time and place for that.
But what's your plan? Maybe your plan is to, you know, Hey, let's do a walk and talk or a walking lunch or hang out in my room one lunch a week and get caught up that way, right? Set some boundaries with people, okay? Your coworkers that you need to work with. Okay? So that's four. Number five is what is your plan to protect your peace from negative people?
You need a boundary plan. There are going to be people who drag you down. Down, right? There are so many valid complaints in education. I am not invalidating anybody's experience. Days in a classroom are tough. Students are dysregulated. Administrative, you know, just their plans and their demands are unreasonable.
Parents can be difficult. Like it, you can have a really tough day in the classroom. Everybody's experience is valid, but you know who those people are who are genuinely having a bad day and those people who are having a bad attitude day in, day out. They have the worst kids, the worst parents, the worst curriculum, the worst ever.
They just want to complain. And when you run into them, they suck you dry. Right? You know when you're just like a, let's imagine that you're bouncing along having a great day and you're a beautiful full juicy grape full of love and light and the minute you stop talking to them you're a shriveled up prune.
Okay? They just sucked it all out of you. You're a raisin. Okay? You know those people. What is your plan? How are you going to limit exposure? Do they all hang out in the lunchroom? Are you going to have your strategy of validate and bounce? Okay. Go back and listen to episode six. Tips for teachers how to protect your piece from toxically negative co workers.
I do a whole deep dive in there and this one strategy, validate and bounce, is really helpful for that. But have a plan, have a plan. Don't be a victim. Don't like, oh my gosh, the lunchroom is so negative and it wears me out and those people wear you out. Like who's making you go to the lunchroom? Like, why do you go to the lunchroom?
Well, just stop being a victim. Make a different plan. Make a different plan. Okay? There are things we can't control. You know, how much time we voluntarily spend around people who wear us out. Like, you can control that. Control what you can control. Okay, so that's Part five of the boundary plan, you with me so far?
Okay, number six, how you gonna set boundaries with students. Now, above and beyond classroom rules. Okay, those are boundaries, those are rules, okay, but there are other things, right, that you need to set boundaries with students. Be intentional about it. Don't wait until it comes up. Have the script, have the idea.
What about the student who wants to be friends with you on social media? That's a heck no. Okay, how are you going to communicate that? Watch your policy on late assignments. Okay, when a student, please, please, please, okay, calm, consistent consequences. Those three C's will never take you wrong, but you need to have a plan.
If you don't have a plan, then what happens is you, again, start looking like you play favourites. You don't do it for one, you start doing it for the other, you succumb to somebody's, you know, big doe eyes, oh please. You've had their siblings, you don't want to let their parents down, you know, whatever.
And take the emotion out of it. Just, it isn't you making a decision, you just have a policy, and it isn't even your policy, it's the classroom policy. So I'll write down these magic words, the classroom policy is, right, if a kid says to you, oh, like, I get, this is late, blah, blah, blah, just, the classroom policy is Blank.
That's a form of boundary. Okay. Take yourself out of the equation. You're, it's not an opinion or a judgment or a favor or, you know, something that you're deciding in the minute. It is your classroom policy. The classroom policy. Now, the caveat there is you needed to have communicated that policy at the beginning of the year.
Okay. And if you haven't had a policy, you need to think about it and how to communicate it. Okay. So the classroom policy is. All right. So that's an overview of the six parts of your boundary plan. Please take some time to think about this and have a plan. And I've, I've listed some episodes there that really do a deep dive.
You, I, I've got at least 30 episodes in this podcast about setting boundaries. Okay. So it shouldn't be something that, okay, she's just telling us to do it. We don't know how to do it. Go find those areas that you feel maybe you are weak in, but putting it all together in a plan is something I haven't talked about before, and it's something that's very pertinent to the beginning of the year.
Again, if you're not listening at the beginning of the year, don't panic. You can update your terms and conditions at any time, just like anybody else. So let's recap. A complete boundary plan. A living document that is somewhere. Write it down. The reason you want to write it down again, just keep it as a Google doc that you can change or update, print out, keep in your planner, star on your pin on your, on your desktop, whatever, just give it some thought, give it some thought, some intentionality, some intention and attention.
And the six areas are, how are you going to, last week we talked about how you're going to show up. Okay. How are you going to show up because we talked about reflection and being less concerned about a to do list and more concerned about how, what, who you want to be list. So the way that you be the person you want to be is you set your boundaries and hold, hold yourself to them.
So this is about what are you going to do? How are you going to show up was last week. Now, how are you going to maintain that is this boundary plan. And the six. Areas to think about. 1. Boundaries on your time. 2. Boundaries on your space. Physically. Emotionally. Don't forget that vicarious trauma piece.
Number 3. Boundaries with parents. Number 4. Boundaries with people you have to work with. Number 5. Boundaries with people you don't have to work with and you want to protect your peace from them if they're toxically negative. Battery drainers, I call them, and number six, boundaries with students. Okay, so that should be enough to get you going.
Give it some thought. If you need help, you know, reach out to me. Ask me. I am going to give a quick plug here that in the Elevated Teacher Experience, there is access to my whole core curriculum. That whole core curriculum, those six modules, the exercises all of the videos, they're all short, but actionable, scientifically validated, all geared towards the classroom.
A lot of that goes through each of these pieces. And that whole module three culminates in a complete boundary plan. So if you feel you need specific help with that, maybe just join the membership for a month. Get what you need and then leave. There's no long term commitment. You can dive in and go straight to that one module.
And then get out if that's your preference. So no hard feelings about that. That again is gracestephens. com forward slash elevate. In the meantime, I wish you really good back to school shopping. I hope you get all the deals. I hope you find the day call you want. I hope you find the best place for I used to be on this text chain with my other friends, like Staples has the, the composition books, like only 25 cents, but you know, you could only get 12 of them, right?
Or Walmart has them, or, you know, Target still has purple ones. Like it would be kind of, kind of fun. It would be kind of fun. So that's the good stuff. Enjoy it. And I want you to squeeze every last ounce of joy out of summer if you if you can. While listening to this over summer and remember until next week, I believe in you, I care for you.
I, I have so much respect for you that this is your, your chosen mission in life is to Influence the future one student at a time. If you find anything in there, in here helpful, Oh my gosh, please tell your teacher friends. Seems like this podcast is a big secret. Let's let's, let's share it. Let's share the wealth.
And until next time, create your own path and bring your own sunshine.
