We just finished our sixth week of school, sent home our first round of progress reports, and I am exhausted.
How about you?
I won’t go into all that’s causing the overwhelm and exhaustion because, well, that would make me even more overwhelmed and exhausted. And I’ll bet that you have your own list anyway.
Instead, I’m choosing to focus on 18 things that are actually making a positive difference for me right now.
1 – Doing something active for 30 minutes every day. Some days I walk outside, other days I do some type of streaming workout (Beachbody On Demand is my favorite), or one of my beloved FIRM DVD’s.
2 – Sticking to my favorite nutritional habits: drinking at least 8 glasses of water, eating 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables, and intermittent fasting for 16 – 19 hours every day. (To learn more about intermittent fasting, here’s a link to my favorite book: Fast Feast Repeat by Gin Stephens. She also wrote Delay, Don’t Deny and runs intermittent fasting support communities on Facebook.)
3 – Keeping the post-it note and the Flair pen manufacturers in business by making lists and writing down EVERYTHING. Seriously. I write down all the morning prep things I need to do to be ready for the virtual teaching day. I write down exactly what I am going to do during prep/planning time and what students I am going to see during asynchronous learning time, plus all the things I plan to do when school is “out” for the day.
4 – Reading something aloud to my students every single day. My students enjoy it and it is an integral part of literacy learning. That’s all good, but the main reason I do it is that I enjoy it and I believe it builds community relationships around shared texts.
5 – Remember all those lists I am making about what to do every day? I also have my daily schedule on a list. I am trying to be consistent about stopping work at a consistent time every day. That was difficult this week because I had some extra prep to do for a reading unit and because I had to create progress reports.
But my goal here is to have scheduled time away from “school,” even though my “classroom” is at home. I think about how, if I were working in school right now, I would leave the building at a (generally) consistent time every day and go do things that are on my personal or home or family tasks list. This is the same idea.
In the spring, I know that I burned myself out by working almost constantly. It was so easy to just let school tasks consume the evening when we were at home and not going anywhere or doing much else. I decided to create better habits for myself this fall.
6 – I am reading books for fun. Here’s what’s on my list right now: American Royals, American Royals II: Majesty, 28 Summers, the Paradise series by Elin Hilderbrand, Summer Darlings, and The Last Train to Key West.
I made this list during the summer and it has some great books I enjoyed as well.
Beach books7 – More serious books that are on my list to read soon: My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, A Promised Land by Barack Obama, Everything Beautiful in Its Time by Jenna Bush Hager, His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham, and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.
8 – Trying very hard to get seven hours of sleep every night. I’m not consistent about that one yet.
9 – Revisiting some of my favorite cookbooks when planning meals. Three favorites: What Can I Bring? by Elizabeth Heiskell (her chicken enchiladas are amazing), Love Welcome Serve by Amy Nelson Hannon, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond.
10 – Avoiding any political news right now. Netflix, HGTV, Disney Plus, and Apple TV are my new best friends.
11 – For the same reason: more Instagram, less Twitter and Facebook.
12 – Wearing slippers to work! My UGG slippers are still my favorites, but I got these on Amazon and I like them a lot too!
13 – Wearing soft, comfy clothes like this Daily Ritual dress and my new favorite joggers. I also bought a couple of these cardigans on Amazon and can’t wait for the temperatures to cool off a little so I can wear them!
14 – Burning candles like this Warm & Cozy candle and my other favorite scent: Hello Fall.
15 – Pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks. I know they’re not everyone’s favorite, but they remind me that fall, my favorite season is here! Here’s a great copycat recipe if you want to make your own, inexpensive version at home.
16 – Looking for what I can change or improve instead of focusing on what isn’t so great right now. I am working on a couple of posts with tips and suggestions that are making a positive difference with my class.
Quick question for you: would you like these posts to be lengthy, with several different suggestions, or shorter, with more bite-size tips to try? I would appreciate hearing your feedback!
17 – Appreciating my teacher friends. They are always the best. But right now, when no one else can quite understand what we are dealing with, they are my lifeline. I am finding that all of us feel so unsure and so depleted — almost like being a first-year teacher all over again. Sharing those feelings, asking for help, getting their tips for how they are doing whatever it is I am struggling to do, asking for advice – all of those things are keeping me going. I always come away from these conversations with renewed energy, mostly from just knowing that other teachers completely understand how I feel and are “in the trenches” with me, struggling to do the very best job we can do right now.
18 – Expressing gratitude. Every day, I find at least three things or people or events that I can appreciate. I find it helps to thank your teacher friends, your students, your students’ parents, your own family — anyone who says or does something that helps you, makes you laugh, or builds you up. There is much good all around us, always. Making an effort to look for it and to be thankful for it helps get me out of whatever funk I might be in.
On that note — I am grateful to you for doing the work that you are doing. What is saving you right now?