When You Have Too Much to Do and Too Little Time [Episode 148]

Rebecca 0:00
Last week, I shared with you how to approach covering all of your content, practically like looking at your standards and also the skills you want to teach your students and figuring out, like, how do we do this? How do I know when to slow down and remediate? How do I know when to keep bulldozing and push forward? So if you missed that episode 147, from last week. You need to go back and listen to it, because we are talking about covering content over this next three weeks. But that’s the really, really practical one with kind of the thought process that I would go through to make those decisions. This week, I want to continue that conversation of what to do when you just have, like, too much to do and too little time, but really to think about when you have too many interruptions as well. So this is really going to be more of like a pep talk episode for those of you who thought through your content and decided what you’re going to focus on, and made your plan, and you started to implement your plan, and then you keep getting interrupted, and you keep having things get in the way of you making progress like you want, and you’re starting to feel stressed out about not covering all of the content. So this is me speaking to you to kind of pep you up. And if you have not gotten to that point in the school year so far, I’m so glad. I hope you never get there, but hopefully this will be something you can come back and listen to if it does happen, just to kind of make yourself feel better about the situation, because it’s so so normal. All right. Are you ready to be pumped up? Let’s get to it. This is secondary science simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives. I’m Rebecca Joyner from it’s not rocket science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend, let’s get to today’s episode. You

I said this at the top of last week’s episode, but I’m going to say it again. There is way too much expected of you with how much time you’re actually given. And I’m not even talking about the interruptions that y’all have. I’m just talking about this straight up class time that you have okay, even just like, look at the math. One of my first teaching jobs, I taught 50 minute class periods every single day all year. So I saw students five days a week, and I saw them for four nine week quarters. So when you do 50 minutes every day times five days a week, times 36 weeks in the school year, I was getting 9000 instructional minutes. Now, of course, that’s just the baseline that’s not including fire drills and pep rallies and, you know, assemblies and spirit week things and standardized testing interruptions, but like at a baseline, I had 9000 minutes. Now, on the other hand, in my other teaching job I had, I saw students two different ways. One way was semester block, which was 90 minutes every day, five days a week, but only for the first semester, so for 18 weeks. So 90 times five times 18, that was only 8100 instructional minutes. 8100 instructional minutes, as opposed to 9000 that’s a 10% loss of instructional time right off the top. Like if you teach a 10 unit curriculum, like I do in chemistry, that’s already one entire unit I know I can’t get through, and that’s not even talking about interruptions. That’s a big difference, and that it was the same too when I taught AB semester. So every other day 90 minutes, the math works out the same as it did for semester blocks. So I just want to acknowledge that for those of you that are like, this is so hard I have no time. Or, you know, maybe you look, you use my it’s our archives science unit plans, and you look at the 50 minute Traditional Plan, and you’re like, I never getting through as much as she gets through. Okay, well, let’s just think though about the difference in time here and what you are potentially losing now all of Next week, episode 149 is devoted to semester block teachers and those of you that are just starting naturally at a 10% time deficit. So stay tuned for that. But I’m just giving you this math overview now so that you can just look at the facts and not feel so bad about the fact that you’re struggling to get through all the content. Of course, you’re struggling to get through all the content. You do not have enough time. Especially, I’m thinking of some of y’all who email me and you have the craziest schedule. Some of you see your students for 42 minutes a day. Yeah, you’re like, eight minutes less. Okay, it’s almost like 20% less of your instructional time. It just, it’s a lot. Or some of you are like, I see my students twice a week for 65 minutes, and then one day a week for 40 and I’m like, doing that math, and I’m like, the math doesn’t math like you are losing so much time on just your baseline amount of time before interruptions. So I just want to encourage you in that if you have 50 minutes every single day all year. Or, you know, 36 weeks you most likely have the max amount of instructional time of any other teachers. So if you’re still struggling, I’m like, I get it. I struggle too. But also think about, like, your teacher friends that are on different schedules because most likely they’re having even less time than you are. I tell you that to, like, not make you more depressed looking at the numbers, but just to be affirmed like, Yeah, this is basically impossible. Here’s the truth I need you to hear. And this is why this is more of a pep talk episode. You are set up to fail with this situation. Okay, you cannot win here. It’s like me, anytime I try to do anything with my children on a Thursday afternoon, Thursdays, my kids are literally toast. They are so done, they’re so tired from the week, and yet they can’t even celebrate, like it’s Friday and it’s the weekend because it’s not Friday and it’s not the weekend, and they still have to rally for one more day. And it’s just like they cannot hold it together. Anytime I have a kid who’s just like, absolutely melting down or having a lot of sibling conflict. I swear. I look at the calendar, I’m like, of course, it’s Thursday. We’re at a loss before we even get started. Okay, that is how this is like you are. It’s gonna be tough walking into this. And the other thing I want you to hear is like, there is no practical solution that is gonna perfectly fix this problem, which y’all know I hate because I live for a practical solution. I shared with you my practical ideas last episode, like, Hey, this is the way I would kind of approach this and deciding what to focus on, knowing you can’t get through it all. Here’s what I would do, but I don’t have a solution that’s like, here is how you make sure that you get through every single thing. Because one, all of your situations are so nuanced. And two, again, even if we set this up perfectly, there are gonna be those interruptions, those tropical storms that keep you out of school, those like, whatever it is, that are going to kind of mess with you and make this really, really hard. And I think I wasted so much of my own energy when I was in the classroom trying to, like, beat a broken system, trying to make it work, and make do everything on my end, on the front, to be so proactive, so that I would not get stuck in this pickle of, you know, feeling like I’m can’t get through it all, and then inevitably it would happen, and then I would be so upset, and it’s just wasted energy. So what I think we really need here is not, I mean, yeah, we need a practical solution, but I don’t think it exists. So the alternative here is a mindset shift and to really focus on controlling only what can be controlled, and really letting go of the rest and having open hands with it, like being like, Hey, I’m just this is what I’m shooting for. I’m going to do the best that I can do, but I’m not going to stress myself out if I can’t get through all 10 of these chemistry units when I’m starting off 10% behind in instructional minutes. So in light of all of that, I’m going to share five things with you to hopefully help with that mindset shift. Now, before we go over those, I have already done a podcast episode about what to do if you’re like, if you’re listening to this, like in the spring, and you’re feeling so behind schedule, and you’ve got the EOC exam looming and you’re freaking out. I have a whole episode about that already. That’s Episode 116 so I’ll link that in the show notes so you can check it out. But this episode is more like, on the front end, like we’re starting the year, or we’re a quarter end of the year, and we’re starting to feel that anxiety and that weight of like, all we have left to do and not enough time to do it, and even on a micro level, not just like all the content we have to get through, but all the stuff you have to do on your plate just to get through your school day and your responsibilities. How do we get through it. So let’s walk through these five ideas that I have for you. First is something I talk about so much on this podcast, and that is assessing your current season. It is so important with anything that has to do with mindset or work life balance or stress related to the workplace that you are very, very hyper, clear and compassionate towards yourself, about the current season that you are in. You might have things going on in your personal life this year that limit your capacity, this school year, which is going to limit what you’re going to be able to do, what how efficient you’re going to be able to be during your planning time, how resilient and positive you’re going to be able to be to bounce back from setbacks when you you know all of a sudden lose a day of instructional time with your students. Unexpectedly, all of that is going to be handled totally differently based on where you are, personally and mentally and just your headspace with your life. So I want you to give yourself a really clear just take a really clear look at your life right now. What’s going on in it, what might be unique this school year that’s different from past school years, and then give yourself a lot of compassion if you’re not functioning at the normal capacity that you have in previous years, because, most likely, it’s because of something going on in your season. The second thing i. What you do after you think through that is identify what matters most in your current season of life. And again, what matters most is always different based on each person, and it’s going to be different each year. And maybe what matters most to you this year is getting through all the content, and so you’re going to do your darndest to get through all the things, or maybe what matters most to you this year is giving the best feedback, so you’re gonna stay late in grade. Maybe what matters most this year is walking out that door at 4pm and not thinking about work again until you get back. And so if that matters most to you, I applaud you, and that’s what we’re gonna do this year. And we’re gonna do serious mind set shifting here to make sure that you don’t feel guilty about that, because there’s nothing to feel guilty about in walking out the door after your contract hours are over and not thinking about work. The third thing we’re going to do is we’re going to clarify our content and our skill priorities, using that strategy and all those systems and steps I talked through In last week’s episode. That’s the thought process I want you to go through to make sure okay, like when I am at school, what’s going to be my biggest priority here? And then fourth thing I want you to do is simply do the best you can with what you have in your current season. Maybe this is the year that you just stop grading all of the things because you need to have more space in your planning period to actually lesson plan so that you can leave at 4pm or maybe this is the year that you have a brand new prep so you’re not going to try anything new in any other class. You’re just going to use the resources someone you know left behind for you, and you’re going to let it be because you’re going to focus all your attention on another class. Okay, there’s no wrong answers here, but we are going to have to let go of some things in order to function within your current capacity, within your current season. And then the fifth thing I want to encourage you to do is give yourself the same grace that you give your students. I often find in my conversations with teachers, we are so much harder on ourselves than we are in our students. And I’m not saying you need to be like meaner to your students. I’m saying you need to be nicer to yourself. It is okay if we don’t get through all of the things. That’s where identifying what matters most is so important and keeping your eyes on that. And then at the end of the year, you can say, hey, we didn’t get through all 12 units we were supposed to. But you know what, I built, the relationships I wanted to build. And like every kid who walks out of this classroom knows how to do a graph perfectly, and I feel great about that. So really like not lowering the bar as much as it is clarifying the height of the bar and making sure that you are okay with not doing above and beyond Olympic level. You know, pole vaulting here okay when we’re just trying to, like, touch the bar, we don’t need to be, like, leaping our bodies over top of it. I can’t stop thinking about the Olympics, and it’s been over for a couple weeks, and I’m still so sad about it, because we just had the most fun summer watching it. So I hope I know that’s like five really simple things here, but I just think I’m so sad of talking to so many of you and just hearing how exhausted you are trying to do all this stuff, and you’re so overworked, and you’re like, I can’t get through it. I’ve got all this going on, and I just want you to be like, it’s okay. Are you honestly gonna get fired if you don’t get through all this this year? Will your admin even notice if you don’t get all through all of this this year? Okay? And maybe you’d have five preps, and two of them are EOC and AP classes, okay, maybe put most of your energy to those then, and let’s let the other ones go a little bit,

I promise you, you know, if your your students in biology when they’re 30 years old, if they don’t really know exactly what a ribosome does, that’s a bummer, because ribosomes rock and but I’m a biology teacher, so that’s why I think that. But like, if they don’t know what a ribosome does, I think that’s fine, because most likely, you probably taught them a lot of other things with the energy you had. So let’s really, really get clear about your values, your priorities, your season of life. Again, I have a virtual PD mini course all about this called core values. I’ll link it in the show notes. You can check it out. But I think it really, really helps with this mindset work of being okay with being limited and your humanity and giving yourself grace and not feeling guilty doing that, because that’s what I really hope for each of you listening to this. All right, so next week we’re going to continue this conversation. It’s going to be more specific. I know this one was more of like a rah, rah. You can do it kind of podcast, and some of you guys don’t love those. If you do love those? Let me know. Leave me a DM, send me a message, leave a review for the podcast if you love those. So I know that these aren’t wasted, but I promise next week, we’re gonna get really specific and practical. For those of you who are teaching on block schedule, whether that’s semester block or like AB block, or you have some sort of weird combo situation going on, like we talked about. Like 270 minute class periods a week, and 130 minute class period that episode’s gonna be for you, because y’all are the ones who mathematically have the least amount of instructional time. So tune in next week, and I’ll see you then to keep going on with this conversation. And if you have any questions, you can always DM me. It’s not rocket science on Instagram. Can email me. I’m Rebecca, it’s not rocket science classroom.com, and then you can find the show notes for this episode at, it’s not rocket science classroom.com/episode, 148 All right, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher. Head to It’s not rocket science classroom.com/challenge, to grab your classroom reset challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week. Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, Teacher friend.