Education is full of trends! Some trends really take off, especially in the digital age. However, not every trend is worthy of becoming one of your go-to, tried-and-true classroom habits. In fact, my #1 suggestion for a happier, healthier classroom is to stop trying to do it all. Accept and welcome limitations. Nurture classroom habits that are meaningful for you and your students. And do not feel compelled to try every social media trend for fear of being left out.
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Time Management Classroom Habits
Mastering classroom time management is such an important part of building work-life balance. I am constantly working on building this set of classroom habits. However, protecting and managing your teacher time is also something you get better at the longer you teach. Here are some tricks and tips to help manage your classroom time:
- First, stop leaving writing feedback by hand! Switch to a screen recorder like Loom!
- Similarly, stop ignoring rubrics. Students presenting? Use a rubric. Students designing comic strips? Use a rubric. Students engaging in discussion? Use a rubric. Seriously, rubrics take the guesswork out of grading. This saves times and will make you a happier teacher! (Check out my favorite rubric!)
- Stop living at school by protecting and honoring your contract time. First, protect your contract time by learning how to leave conversations and commitments that aren’t serving you. Second, honor your contract time by arriving and leaving within a certain window of time.
- If you’re looking for more time saving hacks, check out these recommendations!
Energizing Classroom Habits
Teaching requires an unreal amount of energy! Maintaining your energy without coming across as inauthentic is tough. (Because students know when you’re being fake.) These classroom habits have helped me maintain my energy throughout the day.
- First, I ditched my teacher desk. It houses my classroom microwave and refrigerator. This keeps me moving (although not always standing) throughout the day.
- Second, stop ignoring spirit days! It’s always fun to go through the Starbucks line dressed as a book character or wearing cat ears. Plus, everyone knows pajama day is the best! Having fun with spirit days definitely helps me connect with students and stay energized.
- Next, stop only reading the books your students are reading. It’s nice to have a common book language with your students, but your classroom reading habits don’t have to mirror your students’ habits. During silent reading time, I model choice reading but select titles that interest me. Sometimes those align with my students’ interests, and sometimes they don’t. And that’s okay! Check out my some of my favorite books!
- Finally, stop trying to make fetch happen. Mean Girls is not a font of deep philosophy, but Regina George was right: fetch is not going to happen. Whatever your “fetch” is, let it go. My “fetch” is irrational anger. For example, we’re a Google school, so everything we do happens in the Google suite. For this reason, I get so annoyed when someone sends me a Microsoft Word document. And I have to let that go. It’s stupid to sacrifice my happiness for fetch.
Stop Martyrdom
In Straight Talk, Dolly Parton’s character says “get off that cross, someone needs the wood.” I think about this quote a weird amount. In the education world, it’s easy to make a classroom habit out of martyrdom. However, that’s not a sustainable mindset. Here are two posts to help you stop being a teacher martyr:
