Building a Back to School Mindset

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Hello friend and welcome back to another episode of Artworks for Teachers. I’m your host, Susan Riley, and today it’s just you and me, friend. We are going to be talking about building a back to school mindset. So if you’re listening to this at the time of this recording, it’s about mid -August, it’s that sweet spot season of back to school. Some of you have been back to school for a couple of weeks already and you’re in the swing of things. Some of you are just getting into your summer and some of you really don’t even want to be thinking about this topic just yet because you’re going back in a couple of weeks and you’re not there yet. But like I said, sweet spot, right? This is the time of year where we’re all thinking about back to school, whether we’re ready for it or not. And as I shared with PJ Caposey a couple of weeks ago, this is like that time when you’re opening up a gift and you’re anticipating what’s inside the bag or the box that you’re opening, right? It’s a time of sweet anticipation where you’re like, this is gonna be the best year ever. I’ve got everything ready. I’m excited. There’s new stuff coming down the pike. I’m ready. Or you are dreading it because the break didn’t feel quite long enough or you were doing all kinds of other things during your break and didn’t get enough of a rest. And so you’re kind of like, ooh, I’m not ready yet.

I wanna be, but I’m just not there. It can kind of be this mixed bag of emotions, right? But ready or not, it is here, it is coming down the pike for us. And so I wanna talk about getting our minds right around the back to school season so that we can set ourselves up for as much success as possible, right? I have found in as my 40 some odd years of working and of kind of getting ready to go to school in whatever capacity that is, that mindset is our very best friend or our very worst enemy. When I was in middle school, was a real struggle for me to go to school. And I remember there were times that I would just lay in bed and my mom couldn’t drag me out of there. And she would tell me over and over, just get your feet moving.

When you get your feet moving, the rest of it will fall into place. And sure enough, it did. By the time I would get to school, I was fine. But just the thought of having to go and not being able to be in that motion was difficult to get going, right? So mindset is what makes or breaks us here, especially during this season with such a tumult of emotions. And so today I want to share some ways that we can really set our minds up for the very best success for the year. I have just completed reading the book Ambition Monster from Jennifer Romanolini. If you have not read it, it is a very interesting memoir. I’m gonna put it that way. It’s not a book for everybody. The first half documents her early childhood life, which was really, really stressful. She comes from a working class family in Philadelphia where her parents were married young and made a lot of mistakes and she does not shy away from those mistakes. It is gritty, it is very disturbing in some areas, but she also uses that as kind of fuel for understanding why her career path led to where it was. Jen Romilini ended up being the content director, the chief content officer for Shondaland.com, she, in the interim, she rose through the editorial ranks at lots of different magazines from Conde Nast, Lucky, to a lot of other kind of content websites throughout her career. And so this book documents her kind of climbing that career ladder and the idea of ambition. And so why am I bringing this up? Because for a couple of reasons.

Throughout the book, it really does highlight what ambition does to us, how it drives us, and how it can be good and evil at the same time. It also highlights perfectionism. And I’m sorry, friends, but to be the bearer of bad news, but you and I as educators have this underlying current of perfectionism and currency of perfectionism that we trade

The current drives us forward, but the currency is what we trade in. And we oftentimes trade ourselves, our well -being, for perfectionism in the classroom, for what that looks like. And perfectionism looks different for everyone. I’m not saying all educators are type A educators where perfectionism grips a hold. Some are type B educators, but perfectionism is still very real thing for us, even as type B educators, if you want to type A type B it. The idea though is that we are constantly comparing ourselves. We are never good enough. Nothing ever measures up. We are striving and straining to make sure that every student who sits in front of us has the best experience possible. And we teeter totter on the edge

You know not being good enough for those students That’s why this book is important and that’s why I’m bringing up this book because That is unrealistic Go back and listen to the two episodes previous when I spoke with PJ Kaposi and he talks about this that the standards that we set ourselves to are unrealistic as educators and Knowing that is super important before you even step foot into back -to -school

You have to give yourself grace and I’m going to come back to this a lot, but understanding our perfectionism that gets in the way, our ambition that we want and hold on to that. Ambition is a good thing. It can be a good thing, but knowing the line of where your ambition ends. The other part about Jen’s story that I thought was really important as we get into this back to school season is there is a section here where she has pushed herself to the brink of physical exhaustion and her voice actually gives way. She develops what’s called polyps. Those of you who are vocalists or who have vocal training know what polyps are and it’s something that’s really scary. They’re these big bumps that form on your vocal cords and if you think of your vocal cords, they’re actually more like folds. So if you can watch me on YouTube, you’re going to see me do this. But if think about holding your hands together, so that your pinkies and your side of your hands touch. Okay. And then kind of pull them together like they’re folding in. That’s what your vocal cords actually look like. Okay. If I do this this way, they kind of look like this. They’re not really cords. They’re more like folds that come in and touch one another. And that’s what makes the sound. Well, a polyp develops usually on the sides of your folds and there are these big round

Kind of just the growths that happen on your folds and when your folds go to close Which allows you the rubbing of the folds that causes the sound? Imagine that there are two kind of golf balls Sitting on top of them, right? The golf balls are gonna stop the folds from touching which means you lose your voice, right?

Oftentimes when we think of laryngitis, that’s not polyps, laryngitis is an inflammation. So you have an inflammation around those folds. So again, those folds can’t touch. So you lose your voice again, right? Well, in the book, Jen develops polyps on her vocal folds so that she is losing her voice. She literally cannot speak. She goes to a surgeon in LA who has worked on Adele’s voice, right? And she looks at these polyps and says, here’s the thing, they’re gonna rupture because you’re doing too much talking. You’re using your voice in an inappropriate way because you’re just talking too much. So you need to stop talking, you need to shut up. And then we need to do surgery in order to remove these two polyps. And Jen just

She just, she’s in this zone where she’s working and working and working and there’s no way to stop talking. And I want you to think about this for a moment as if you as a teacher had this diagnosis of these polyps and some doctor told you, you have to stop talking for your own wellbeing. You have to stop talking. Would you be able to do your job? Probably not, right? That would terrify me, especially if I was a music teacher, right? Like how the heck am I supposed to do

And there are lots of ways around this but of course Jim doesn’t do it because she’s thinking of everyone else but herself and So by the time she goes back to the doctor the polyps are ready to rupture and the doctor’s like well We can’t afford to wait any more surgery it is so she does this surgery and she has no choice But to be silent for about three weeks to allow her vocal folds to heal okay, and in this story

She ends up listening because she has no other choice. She cannot speak. She ends up listening and going to her everyday life in meetings and working with others and just observing what’s going on and listening to everything around her. And what she discovers is that the environment that she was in that she thought was this bustling, exciting environment was actually really, really toxic. There were things happening that she wasn’t aware of. People were making snide comments to others that people weren’t addressing. Others were talking about things that were totally off topic, had nothing to do with what was going on in the building at that time, but it was distracting other people. And so because she was able to listen, she was then able to identify what the problems were. And then of course, unfold for herself, how to get out of it. Okay, now I bring this up because when you go into back to school season, when you go back to school and you go to those staff meetings, when you’re in all of the conversations and the PD that is required at back to school, sure participate, but I think it’s also a really valuable practice for us to just listen. Spend as much time as you can quiet, not because you don’t want to participate, but because you are actively listening to everything else going around you. And when you do that, when you stop and listen to actually what’s being said, what you’re hearing, the tone and the body language that’s coming across, you’re going to identify some things that you like and some things that you don’t like. And I think it’s important for you to know that before the rest of the year unfolds, because how we set it up in the beginning, is how we’re getting ready for the rest of the year, right? And just by being an active listener, an active observer, and thinking about, I could chime in here, but I’m not going to, because I really want to listen to what others have to say, to listen to what is actually being said, you’re going to come away with so many insights in terms of the group as a whole, but also your part in

I think that is one of the biggest insights that I took from Jen’s book. wasn’t just that she was listening to everybody else around her. She was also reflecting on her part in it, which she no longer played because she was just listening. So before we head into back to school and we get into the rough and tumble of everything going around, as you’re headed into those PDs, as you’re being involved in all of these meetings, yes, participate but also take moments where you can be quiet, listen, actively observe what’s going on, and then determine from there who you wanna be in that arena, who you don’t wanna be, so that you can set yourself up for your year. They’re busy setting themselves up, the school is setting you up for a year, however that is gonna go, but you can set yourself up as well, right? And you can determine and own who you’re gonna be this year in the midst of whatever is going on in your building, right? I think that’s key number one. Number two, know yourself. So this goes right along with that. Knowing who you are is so important and knowing what your boundaries are, what you will and will not do, where your timeframe is gonna be spent, right? Determining that for you is key here to setting you up for the back to school season.

And yes, you’re going to have PD that’s like, here’s what our goals are for the year. Here’s where we’re going. This is where our lay of the land is, right? If you’re starting a new initiative, if you’re starting five new initiatives, whatever it is, right? You have the PD, you have, you know, what’s, what’s coming down the pike from administration, what the expectations are, all of that good stuff. Yes. Okay. That’s all the stuff on the surface that you have to do or that you have to sort through. But knowing yourself first is key because then you know how to attack the rest of the stuff that’s coming at you. And by this, I want you to think about what Angela Watson talks about in Truth for Teachers all the time, your personal boundaries, right? You have to establish them now, my friend. If you are going to establish a boundary of not taking work home this year, you gotta do it now. And you have to make that a line in the sand.

And if you’re not going to take work home, that doesn’t mean that you stay until nine o ‘clock at night. That means you are done at a certain time of day. And that is it. That’s all of the work you’re going to be able to do that day. Now you can make accommodations for yourself. If that bothers you and you’re like, my gosh, I could never do that because the workload would be unending. Then you also have to know what boundaries in terms of what can you let go of? What is going to actually not move the needle, what’s not going to matter, which is going to bring me to another point that I’m going to make here about doing what’s best for your students as well as yourself. The research is clear. Robert Marzano’s research has totally like shone a light on this. We are never going to get to everything that’s expected. You’re never going to hit every standard that you’re required to meet. You’re just not going to do it. There’s not enough time. There’s not enough curriculum that’s available to hit every standard that we’re trying to hit. It’s not possible, right? So stop trying. From there, that gives you permission to focus on the things that do matter. The things that actually move the needle. The things that are going to set your students up for success, right? Those are what matter. Those are what’s gonna matter to you. What’s gonna set you up for success, right?

Don’t beat yourself up for not being able to meet every expectation because every expectation is not able to be met. So let yourself off the hook and instead focus on the things that are going to matter for your students. Right? And that means doing what’s best for your students. You have to know them. So as you’re headed into the back to school season, remember, build your relationships with students, prioritize that first. Hey, there are so many strategies for doing it.

We’ll link to them in our show notes, we have a whole back to school bootcamp about strategies that you can use. It’s free this year. I invite you to come into it. We’ll hook that into the show notes as well. Strategies that you can use to build relationships, to get to know your students, for them to get to know you, to be able to afford you the ability to build a classroom management plan that is going to work for you and your students, which requires consistency.

And it requires a relationship building quality so that students are not just working out of compliance, but that are actually working because they know you, they like you, and they trust you. Even if they don’t like you, if they know you and they trust you, they’re going to work for you. And that addresses student apathy. So if you’re worried about student apathy, go all the way back to basics, my friends. Do what’s best for students.

And the thing that’s best for students starts with building relationships with them to know them so that you know what’s best for them. Take the week to do this. I promise you, you’re going to think, my gosh, I don’t have time to take an entire week to do getting to know you exercises and relationship building tools and icebreakers and all that stuff. Guess what? You don’t have time not to. Because if you don’t establish it in this first week and you don’t spend the time to do that, you’re going to be chasing your tail for the rest of the school year.

So again, let go of the expectations of all the things that are required of you, do what’s best for you and do what’s best for your students, right? These are key elements of getting into that back to school mindset that is going to set you up for a really positive school year. Fourth, choose a lane and stay in it. Now, this is something that’s gonna be hard for a lot of us, but it’s really, really

What I mean by that is pick your tools and limit yourself to just those tools that you’re going to use this year. So if you’ve decided this is the year I’m going to use arts integration with my students, then stay in that lane. Don’t allow project -based learning or STEAM or differentiated instruction or the next reading curricula and all the bells and whistles that come with that to kind of blur the picture, right? Pick your tool, stay in that lane and focus just on using arts integration inside your curriculum this year. Focus on that one thing and I promise you that one thing by going deep into it is going to serve you better than trying to do all the things and doing none of them well. Right? If this is the year that you start using artificial intelligence with your students, then pick that lane and stay in it. Focus on that one thing and allow

Allow yourself this year to really dig into it with your students. Get it right, because when you do that, you eliminate so much overwhelm. You have decided, nope, I don’t do overwhelm, I’m doing this. This is the lane I’m in this year, because I know that for me and for my students this year, this is the best thing. This is what I’ve chosen, and I’m sticking with it, because I want to really dig deep into it. It allows you so much freedom

Here’s the ironic part, right? Creativity thrives and is found in limitations. So when you eliminate all the other stuff and you pick your lane, you’re gonna find so many creative opportunities pop up for exploring that, whatever it is that you’ve chosen. If it’s artificial intelligence or if it’s arts integration or if it’s differentiated instruction or a million other things that you could pick from. Whatever lane you choose, by limiting yourself to just that thing, along with, of course, your daily requirements, right, of actually teaching. But your theme for that year, essentially, by sticking with that theme, you eliminate all the other things that fly at you. You don’t have to download all 500 different resources or tools or the next big thing that flies at you this year, right? You can be like, that’s great, I’ll address it next year. This year I’ve got this thing.

And now you can look for what are some creative opportunities that I can interweave this theme or this idea or this tool into what I’m currently doing. So that, first of all, will take a ton of weight off your shoulders. But secondly, you will be surprised at how creative that you can be and how innovative your classroom will become by staying in that lane for this year and focusing on

And then my last tip for you as you move back to school in terms of your mindset is grace always. Remember, you’re not perfect, you’re human, right? We’re all human. So we’re gonna make mistakes. We’re gonna backslide into some of our old habits. We’re gonna break the boundaries that we’ve developed for ourselves. We’re gonna get caught up in shiny object syndrome and try new things that have no business being in our curriculum right you’re going to get angry. You’re going to get, disappointed. You’re going to hear things in the school board meetings that dis, that dishearten you. you’re going to be let down by your administrator or by a friend, or a colleague that you thought you could rely on. that’s a part of being human and it’s part of the world we’re in. Right. And so grace always grace for yourself, grace for others. And I think if we lead with that, that helps us to understand and not take everything so personally. It feels personal at the time, but remembering we’re all human. Grace can be extended to everyone. There are always extenuating circumstances under the surface that we don’t know about in that iceberg of learning, right? And we get to do amazing job that many others are not able to do.

Right? My daughter taught a music theater camp this summer and came home every day saying, mama, I don’t know how you’re a teacher. I can’t stand it. These children are just crazy. don’t, I can’t, they don’t listen to me. They don’t do, you know, all the things. And she’s like, I don’t have a teacher’s heart.

And I said, I am so glad that you recognize that now and that you will not be a teacher because we don’t need teachers who don’t have teachers’ hearts. The people who are doing it, you, my friend, who are doing it, who are there, who have that teacher’s heart, you have the best job in the world, whether you believe it or not. And we get the opportunity to bring that to our classrooms. There’s an Instagram, you meme that’s going around the last couple of weeks that has actually been around for a long time of the idea of shifting from I have to to I get to, right? Like I have to get up at six in the morning now. I have to get to school on time. I have to do this reading curriculum to I get to wake up at six in the morning and I get to go to school and impact all of these different lives. And I get to try this new reading program to see if it’s going to work for my kids and help them become better readers.

Yeah, that’s a great mindset shift, right? And it’s something, it’s a great little trick that we can all use. And I myself use it all the time, especially when I find myself surrounded by negativity. I try to remember to do that. But also remember grace always, right? We’re all human. We all are in this together. And remembering that as we start a whole new year together, let go of the past, let go of what happened last year, let go.

Take a breath and let go of what you’re worried about coming down the pike. You have no idea. Who knows if that actually comes into fruition, right? 80 % of our worries never happen. So give yourself grace, give others grace, and try to remember these other ideas that I’ve shared today to help set yourself up for a great school year ahead. I’m excited for what possibilities lie in store for all of us as we get ready for a new school year and I can’t wait to be in it with you this year. We’re gonna take a look at all of the things that are working, not working, how to fix it, getting our hands dirty, and looking at the role that creativity plays in all of it. And I could not be more excited than I am right now to do this walk with you. So I hope that this episode was helpful and it’ll get you ready and excited for the year ahead. And I’m so thrilled to be able to meet with you again next week in our next episode.

Bye for now.

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