Today’s tips are about setting up your workspace, taking breaks from that workspace, and being productive!

You may have already set up a space that is working for you. If so, read these tips and see if any of them can help you make your workspace even better. If you’re struggling, I hope these tips will help you figure out a small space that will work for you.

First, as always, take a deep breath. We can make this work.

1 – Try to choose a space where there will be as few distractions as possible, where you have good lighting, a decent internet connection, and where you can be comfortable. This can be super difficult if you live with other people and everyone is crammed into a small space. Currently, I am using a comfortable chair in the corner of my bedroom. I pulled a lamp nearby, made a stack of books and materials I need, and I’m making it work. It’s not ideal, but it will do for now. Nothing is perfect and we’re all just doing the best we can.

Of course, if you’re lucky enough to have a spare bedroom or a room in your home that is not being used as much, that might be an ideal space to use as your workspace.

2 – Every 20 minutes, take a break from the computer by looking away from your screen. Try looking at something that is 20 feet away for 20 seconds.

3 – Every 30 minutes, take a stretch or movement break.

4 – Every hour, take a break to use the restroom (and wash your hands!), get some water (or more coffee), check social media.

5 – Eat your meals and snacks away from the computer. Take a break for yourself.

6 – Along with those tips, keep your workspace dedicated to working. When you are taking those breaks mentioned above, leave your workspace. Then your brain knows that when you sit down at the workspace, you shift into work mode only.

7 – Create a schedule for yourself, even if you don’t follow it to the letter. List the things you want or need to do daily and an approximate time for when you will do them.

Examples: check email, grade or provide feedback, plan lessons for the day/week, create resources, make videos, “office hours”.

I am trying to follow a routine of 60 minutes of work, then take a 15-minute break schedule. I’m not perfect with it, but I’ll keep trying.

You might also include self-care activities for yourself such as when you will take breaks, when you will work out, when you will take a break for some sunshine and fresh air, and when you will break for meals.

A very important part of setting a schedule for yourself: choose a “quitting time.” I don’t know about you, but I am finding myself working WAY MORE at home than I did when I was in school. Even though I usually took work home at night, it was still a task with a definite endpoint (grading math tests, for example). Now it feels like I am responding to emails or looking for one more thing online, right up until bedtime.

So now I’m trying to set a definite “end of the workday” time for myself.

8 – Even though I don’t have to be at school, showered and dressed, at 7 a.m., I still try to have a set time to shower and get dressed for the day. I admit that the time for that is much later than 6 a.m., but it still helps to have a set time!

9 – If you are using Google Meet or Zoom or making videos, pay attention to what is in the camera view. You don’t have to rearrange/redecorate your house or make the background look “school-like”, but you might want to remove anything that is distracting.

THIS is a funny video from Mary Ehrenworth about what to include and what NOT to include!

10 -You may need to set your boundaries with your own family. And this is a hard one.

If your own children are at home with you, set up “work time” for both of you and structure activities so that your children can be (mostly) independent. Here are some ideas:
~find resources or activities that your children can do independently (or with limited assistance);
~create a (flexible) schedule for your children that aligns with your own work schedule;
~have designated workspaces for yourself and for your children. If you have younger children, they might need to be nearby. If they’re teenagers, you might want them far away from you!

Sometimes it helps if your children know they will get a set time with you later. Try to make this time of working from home time for you and your children to do things you might not ordinarily have time to do (cooking or baking together, crafts, outside time, board games, puzzles, coloring books, reading, yoga, meditation, watching movies, cleaning out closets, etc.). This will ease your own stress as well!

Katie Workman at The Mom 100 has a great website with recipes you can make with your kids.

11 – If you need to make a video, let everyone know so that you won’t be interrupted.

12 – Internet access or speed is an issue for many of us, with so many people online at the exact same time. You might need to set up times for different people in your family to do their work, stream Netflix, or use social media.

13 – Try to work on your most essential tasks in the morning. Or — if you are not so much of a morning person — work on your most essential tasks at your most productive time of day.

14 – Plan your day the night before. Make a list of what you need to do so that you can jump right into it in the morning. This has really been helping me. I used to do this when I was teaching at school (remember those days?!), but stopped doing that once work shifted to home. I just thought, “oh, I can make my list in the morning before I get started.” But I noticed a big difference in my own productivity when I made my list the night before instead of in the morning. Try it and see which works best for you.

15 – Consider using some kind of background noise, white noise, or calming instrumental music while you are working. Or if there is a lot of noise in your home, consider using headphones or earbuds.

I hope you found something useful here. The next post will be about planning for instruction!

This is a hard one for me.

I have very high expectations for both myself and my students. I’m sure you do as well. So suddenly being told that I can’t expect my students to even work on (much less complete) the assignments that I am expected to create really bothers me.

But then I stop and take a deep breath (always good advice).

Yes, I will still work hard to create engaging assignments and resources for students. Yes, I will still send my Google form check-ins and schedule Google Meets with my students. But even if only a few students do the work or fill out the forms or join the meetings, I’ll accept that and call it a win.

I have to continually remind myself of these five things:

1 – Understand that every student is in a different space in terms of what they can actually do.
Some students will have more support than others. Some students will be doing more work (childcare, other chores) at home than what they usually have to do.

Some students will find it difficult to focus on distance learning. (This last one will come as no surprise in terms of students having difficulty with focus. But this type of learning might be more difficult even for the students that ordinarily stay focused and engaged.)

2 – Be flexible and offer as many choices as possible. This will help me to best meet different student learning needs and differentiate as best I can, under the circumstances.

3 – If students are not completing any tasks, I have found it helpful to reach out to them by phone. This is not to berate them for not completing tasks, but just to find out what is going on with them and find out what they might need from me. They were so excited to hear from me. And when I reminded them that I was also reaching out to them through email and Google classroom, they actually worked on several tasks.

4 – When you start to get overwhelmed with all you have to do, remember: You only need to stay one or two steps ahead of your students. You don’t need to overhaul everything in one day or one week. While you may have made plans for a longer range period of time, you only need to provide a few things for your students at one time. In fact, I’m finding that all of this works better when I only send ONE assignment per subject at a time. (I do think it helps to have a weekly learning calendar, like THIS ONE, but a daily reminder or a daily assignment posting is sufficient.

5 – Give yourself grace, give your students grace, give your families grace. Understand that you are on a huge learning curve right now and nothing will be as perfect as it would be if you had had months to prepare for this change. Your students may be doing more “work” at home in terms of helping with younger siblings or doing extra chores. And your parents/caregivers are either continuing to work outside the home or they may be working at home and juggling multiple responsibilities. There will be varying levels of commitment to academics right now.

Here’s a good reminder:

In the next post, I’ll share tips for setting up a productive working space.

This is part one of an eight-part series of tips on distance teaching and learning while saving your own sanity. Today we’ll talk about your own mindset. Here are 17 tips.

1 – Take a deep breath. You can do this. You have done hard things before and learned how to do things you didn’t think you could learn. You can learn to do this — to make videos, to interact with your students over Zoom or Google Meet, to sort through resources and to choose what best fits your students and your own situation. You can do this.
*Do your best but do not try to be superhuman.

2 – Accept the uncertainty of this entire situation. Do what you can do and try to let go of what is outside of your control. (Easier said than done, I realize.)

3 – Don’t try to be perfect. Give yourself some grace. All of us have been thrown into this situation with zero preparation or training and we are doing our absolute best. Do what you can do.

4 – Take care of yourself first. Make sure that you are eating healthy-ish, drinking water, getting enough sleep, and moving your body in some way every day.

5 – In addition to your physical health, it’s important to prioritize your own mental health right now. Do what makes you feel the calmest and relaxed right now. For me, it’s going outside daily, even for just a brief walk. I am also trying to work out daily, in some form, and to get enough sleep. See my post HERE about self-care during this stressful time.

6 – Set up a daily routine for yourself. You might not have to stick to as rigid of a schedule as you do when you have to leave the house for work every day, but try to still have an approximate time when you will take a shower, get dressed, etc. Make sure you take breaks to eat meals. Take breaks to do any necessary home tasks. Do what you need to do for your own family.

Identify set times when you will work on specific school tasks and, even more importantly, when you will NOT work. One “trap” I am falling into is to not leave school at school, as I would during regular classroom teaching. It’s easy to sit down with my laptop to do “one more thing.” Try to set regular hours for yourself and stick to those.

7 – Set up a weekly routine for yourself as well. You might have specific weekly tasks that your district or principal are giving you, but also try to have specific self-care tasks you do for yourself throughout the week. Schedule time to do your regular chores around the house. Try to set up some sort of predictability to your week. Doing so will help you to feel more in control of something during this time when it feels like we have so little control over anything.

8 – Work out at home every day. This might mean taking a walk, a run, or a bike ride outside. If you join the FASTer Way to Fat Loss plan, you will be given daily workouts to do at home (even workouts you can do with your kids!). Beachbody On Demand is another great option. Use any other streaming workouts or YouTube videos or apps. Just do something active every single day.

9 – Take care of your family. Many of us are home with our own children. While we may also be required to work from home on school tasks, we also have our own children to reassure. Keeping to a routine will help.

10 – Check on the other people you love. Even when you can’t physically check on them, a quick phone call, FaceTime, email, sending funny memes, mailing a handwritten note, or texting reminds them that you’re there and that you love them.

11 – Understand that it is next to impossible to transfer all of your content to an online course in a day or a week. You can’t be expected to do that. Provide review and enrichment, but don’t worry about teaching new content as effectively as you would be able to do in your own classroom.

12 – Remember that your students and their families are stressed. Recognize that you (and your students and families) need rest right now. Rest is critical to staying healthy. Expecting yourself to maintain your typical productivity level is not a realistic expectation right now, nor is expecting your students to complete assignments in a “normal” time frame. Nothing is normal right now! Accept that and allow yourself time to rest.

13 – Watch out for social media. While it is more important than ever in some ways (opportunities to connect when we are all social distancing, getting ideas and support from others), it can also trigger guilt and anxiety. Understand that we are all in different places and have different expectations. Do not be intimidated by people who are posting amazing assignments AND cooking gourmet dinners AND re-organizing their entire house AND happily and successfully home-schooling their four children. Delete or unfollow if you must, but remember that YOU need to do YOU.

14 – And by the way: feel free to disregard any tip or suggestion that I, or anyone else, offer. I hereby give you permission!

15 – If there is some project or goal that you have been wanting to tackle at home and it gives you energy to think about it, make plans to work on that during this time! This should not be something you feel like you should do. This should be something you absolutely want to do.

16 – Use this time to learn something new. You can learn how to do most anything online, especially if you start with YouTube. I am working on my Spanish skills using Duolingo. I’m also buying an air fryer and learning how to use that. (Send me all your best tips and recipes if you have an air fryer!)

Other suggestions:
~learn to do something with your hands. Crochet, knitting, sewing. A friend of mine spent a recent afternoon sewing face masks for our local hospital with her daughters.

~learn to cook something new. Another friend of mine is posting a daily recipe trial on Facebook, complete with photos along the way. It’s keeping her mind occupied and helping the rest of us too!

~learn to bake something new. I am still working on mastering the perfect cinnamon roll. (Send me any of your best tips or recipes for that as well!)

~work in your yard or garden or plant flowers in pots

~learn to do something artistic. Paint or draw or use watercolors.

~learn a new craft. Calligraphy is on my list.

~declutter or organize something. This, too, makes you feel a bit more in control. It doesn’t have to be a huge area. Even decluttering a drawer or a shelf will help you feel productive.

17 – If you are a person of faith, spend some time reading devotional books or websites daily. Spend some time doing some Bible study. Pray. Meditate, which is a way you can listen for God’s leading. Even if you are not a person of faith, spend some time in silence and solitude daily. If your kids are home with you, do this together. (Or escape to the bathroom for a few minutes!)

This is a difficult and stressful time. Nothing is normal about this. Remember that, slow down, and take care of yourself. You’ll be a better teacher, mom, partner, and friend if you take care of yourself first.

I hope that you are sheltering in place and maintaining social distancing and doing all the things that are being asked of us right now during this unprecedented pandemic.

And speaking of doing all the things — you’re probably also planning and implementing distance learning on top of everything else going on in our world and in our own families.

I am working on a post about maintaining your balance and sanity while doing all the distance learning work, but I have some new resources to share. So I decided that this post needs to be shared first!

Here we go with part 4. If you missed my earlier posts about free resources, see part 1 HERE, part 2 HERE, and part 3 HERE.

Maintaining contact with students and families
*Use Google Voice to make phone calls if you prefer to not share your phone number.

*Use Padlet for all kinds of interactions with your students. This is an example Padlet that I will be sharing with my class next week, as a “status of the class” for what they are reading independently. (Let me know if you want more directions for how to set up a Padlet wall.)

*Use Google forms to check in with your students. I am sending a different form, complete with bitmojis, every couple of days. I do change the questions but I try to keep it informal. Here’s a copy of one of my latest check-ins.

*Use Google Meet to set “appointment times” with individual students or with small groups. You could also use it for your whole class. I know that a lot of people are using Zoom for this, but I’m a little wary of using Zoom with students. (Although I love it for adult meetings.) Zoom is not “approved” by my school district because the free version is not FERPA/COPPA compliant. I don’t mean to deter you from using it if you love it. Use whatever works best for you!

*To learn to use the free version of Zoom, here is a great YouTube tutorial.

*To help keep a Zoom meeting with your students as private as possible, here is a resource for changing the privacy settings in Zoom.

*If you would like to share an emotional check-in calendar with your students, there are new versions HERE.

*HERE is a great resource for seeing how to set up weekly assignments and check-ins using Google slides.

Resources for all subject areas
*Explore at Home – this is a great site with resources organized by category.

Reading resources
*Resources from Teachers College Reading & Writing Project – there are videos of authors reading books along with lists of great books for kids of different ages

*Time for Kids‘ digital library is now free for the remainder of the school year!

Writing resources
*I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this before, but encourage your students to write good, old-fashioned letters or notes to people. Elderly family members or friends would especially appreciate hearing from them while we are all isolated from each other right now. Of course, writing letters to anyone would be a great use of writing skills. Of course, Face Timing with grandparents or other elderly relatives would also be especially appreciated right now.

*If you want a great resource for vocabulary or spelling study, Vocabulary Spelling City is free for the rest of the year with the code VSCFree90.

Math resources
*Here is a great resource for teachers and families that is FREE until March 31! Download this ebook of math games that uses only a deck of cards from Math Geek Mama.

Content area resources
*Here is a great choice board sample for using the Nearpod resource.

Resources to share with parents
*Here is a great list of resources for parents from Read-Write-Think website

*If your parents are confused about Google Classroom, here is a quick tutorial you can send to them.

*Here is a great resource from Khan Academy, showing sample home learning schedules for kids of different ages, along with links to their resources.

Just for fun
*Art Date with Ms. Kate lessons on YouTube

*Art at Home – Google slides with suggested art activities to do at home.

*Tell your students to wash their hands while reciting the Preamble to the U. S. Constitution! They can learn it HERE with Schoolhouse Rock on YouTube.

*They can also learn to wash their hands with Jimmy Fallon’s song for his two adorable daughters.

*Virtual field trips for American history learning

*More virtual field trip ideas!
~Tour the Known Universe with the American Museum of Natural History

~Nine Planets solar system tour

~tour of Mt. Everest

~tour the Smithsonian Museum

~360 Degree Historial Tours

~tour the Egyptian Pyramids

~tour the Great Wall of China

~tour the National Aquarium

~tour the world on with Scholastic Global Trek

*This calendar of virtual field trips for families looks useful

*It might be a great time for students to learn to play chess! This site will show them how.

That’s it for now! Take care of yourself, wash your hands, get plenty of rest, and go easy on yourself. These are difficult days and you are doing a great job.

I hope you are doing okay and taking care of yourself during this difficult and stressful time. I just learned that North Carolina schools will be closed through May 15 (possibly longer). I am so sad about the sudden end to this school year, before my students and I were ready for it.

I saw this post on Facebook and it encouraged me. I hope it will do the same for you. It was posted HERE by Ken Buck.

As a board member and veteran English teacher, I have felt the urge to write down my thoughts and how incredibly proud I am of educators. Here are my thoughts over coffee this morning:

We gave educators almost no notice. We asked them to completely redesign what school looks like and in about 24 hours local administrators and teachers “Apollo 13’ed” the problem and fixed it. Kids learning, children being fed, needs being met in the midst of a global crisis.
No state agency did this, no so-called national experts on curriculum. The local educators fixed it in hours. HOURS.
In fact, existing state and federal policies actually created multiple roadblocks. Local schools figured out how to do it around those too. No complaining and no handwringing – just solutions and amazingly clever plans.
Remember that the next time someone tries to convince you that schools are better run by mandates from non-educators. Remember that the next time someone tells you that teachers have it easy or try to persuade you that educators are not among the smartest, most ingenious people in society. And please never say to me again, “Those who can’t do anything else just go into teaching.”
Get out of the way of a teacher and watch with amazement of what really happens.

And now — here we go with round three of resources for distance learning during our school closures. I hope you find some good resources to use for your own students OR for your own children!

I’ve also updated the PDF list of resources from all three posts if you want to download it.

Resources for all subjects
Distance learning lessons from North Carolina Teachers of the Year – there are some great lessons here for all subjects and all grades! They are adding a new elementary lesson (grades K-5) every day at 9 a.m. and a secondary lesson (grades 6-12) every day at 9:30 a.m.

Extended at-home learning board from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina.

Elementary digital learning links Padlet

*List of web resources organized on a google sheet. They are organized by grade level and subject!

*YouTube channels for kids ages 5 and up.

This is an awesome list of web resources organized on a google sheet. They are organized by grade level and subject!

*Another awesome list of organized resources on a google sheet. This comes from the Milwaukee with Kids team.

*List of live virtual opportunities that are organized by the time of day they are available!

I love this list of live virtual opportunities which are organized by the time of day they are available!

Reading resources
List of online read-alouds & other learning options

Site about the importance of reading aloud to kids. Did you know that March is read-aloud month?

Authors Everywhere YouTube channel

Knowledge on the Go – knowledge-building content for grades K-12! This is updated daily.

Writing resources
I’ve seen lots of suggestions about having kids document this pandemic and create their own primary source. If you’re interested in doing that, here are some great resources for it.

Historical moment journal prompts organized on google slides

Another option, based on the popular “I Survived . . .” historical fiction books:

Another option, based on the books.

Primary source journal prompts on google slides

New York Times coronavirus resources (if you want students to do some research)

This looks fun. Save Our Habitat gives students a different picture and prompts to write about each day.

Math resources
Rio School District K-8 math resources, organized by grade. Also take a look at the second page where they post some other great resources.

Math visuals videos

Investigations curriculum games, organized by grade level:

ABCya

Bedtime Math – fun family math puzzles

Estimation 180 – I love this site & completely forgot about including it in my earlier lists.

Knowledge on the Go – math knowledge-building content for grades K-12! This is updated daily.

Content areas
Knowledge on the Go – science knowledge-building content for grades K-12! This is updated daily.

Virtual field trips

Weekend fun – google slides

STEM bingo choice board

Ask Dr. Universe

Best nature webcams from We Are Teachers website

That’s it for now! I’ll keep up the hunt for great free resources to share. My next posts will be tips for teachers doing distance learning for the first time (like I’m doing) and tips for parents. I’m also working on a post about building community when you can only connect with students online. Subscribe so you never miss a post!

None of us would ever have expected our work life to be what it is turning out to be. None of us knows what is going to happen — will we go back to school this year? Will we see this year’s students again? How long is this social distancing/staying home thing going to last?

With all of the changes, it’s more important now than ever to look out for your own self-care and mental health.

“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.”
-Parker Palmer

Here are 14 suggestions. Use what works for you. Please share any of your own tips!

1 – Stay hydrated. Drink half your bodyweight in ounces of water every day.

2 – Eat nutritious food. I don’t know about you, but I can often be found “stress eating” because of all the uncertainty. To counteract it, I’m trying to eat 8-10 servings of fruit and vegetables every day and trying to avoid any junk food until I’ve gotten the healthy stuff in me first! (It’s not always working, but I’m trying.)

3 – Get enough sleep, whatever that means for you. For me, it means six to seven hours of sleep at night and maybe a brief nap in the afternoon. Get the rest you need.

4 – Get some form of exercise every day. With gyms being closed and with family being home, you might have to get creative. Even getting outside for a 30-minute walk might be your best option. If you’ve never tried the 7-Minute Workout, now might be a good time!

“Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
~Lucille Ball

5 – Speaking of getting outside, that is one blessing of this whole disaster. At least it’s spring and the weather is good for getting outside. So get some sunshine and fresh air every day, maybe several times during the day. I find that it clears my head and helps keep me from feeling down or discouraged.

6 – Watch the news but in small doses.

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
~Oprah Winfrey

7 -Write down three things for which you are grateful every day. Right now I am grateful for the beautiful signs of spring, warmer temperatures so that I can walk outside and be comfortable, and more time with my family.

8 – Look for humor everywhere. I am loving and appreciating all the tweets and Instagram posts from parents and celebrities, proclaiming their respect and admiration for what teachers do every single day! If you need a quick pick-me-up, check out some of these funny posts from Bored Teachers.

9 – Stop and breathe. Whenever you feel anxious or stressed or discouraged, just stop. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for one minute, or longer if you have the time.

10 – Read whatever makes you feel better. While you might want to use this time to catch up on reading education books or more “serious” books, there is also nothing wrong with reading lighter, more “beach read” types of books.

11 – Watch whatever makes you feel better. Right now, I am watching anything that has a more upbeat message or a happy ending — nothing dark or disturbing. Great news for all of us Hallmark Movie Channel fans — Hallmark is bringing back its marathon of Hallmark Christmas movies! Read more HERE.

12 – Try to develop some sort of schedule or routine that works for you. That gives you some feeling of control, which is important when all of us are feeling like there is no control over this situation. Even if you don’t follow it to the letter, just having a plan will make you feel better.

13 – Spend a few minutes alone every day. That sounds funny since we’re all about “social distancing” right now, but spending a lot of time in relatively close quarters with your family can be stressful. When/if you find yourself “on edge”, make an excuse to go lie down, go take a bath, go for a walk, whatever you need that will help you to reset and get yourself back under control.

“… If you feel “burnout” setting in, if you feel demoralized and exhausted, it is best, for the sake of everyone, to withdraw and restore yourself.”
~Dalai Lama

14 – If your own kids are at home with you, build your routine around a routine that will work for them. When you get downtime, they get downtime (even if it involves more screen time than you usually allow). When you are working, they should be “working” on something (school assignments, puzzles, reading, drawing, etc.).

I hope these tips will be helpful to you. I would love to hear your ideas! Stay strong and take care of yourself during this stressful time.