Journaling can be used for all aspects of life. This year, I am trying to use more than one notebook to work on projects throughout the year. I have chosen to focus on reading, cooking with different food and recipes, and planning out my work on the blog in a Passion Planner. Even though I am working in different notebooks, I always come back to my daily journal to be the constant notebook I have nearby.

A daily journal is critical to keep up with the daily chaos that surrounds our roles, our schedules, and our minds trying to keep up. This blog post is not just about starting a journal; it's about creating a personalized outlet for your thoughts, dreams, and aspirations. The best part about journaling is that it is customizable. You may like my setup, and you may want your journal to look a bit differently. I invite you to take what you need from my daily journal. After a lot of trial and error, you will see my journal mainly focuses on planning, thinking, reflecting, and dreaming.

Before moving into separate notebooks this year, I would always keep my reading notes in my daily journal. I set a goal this year to read 60 books, and in doing so, I want to be more purposeful about the learning that goes along with reading those books. As a former middle school English teacher, I tend to stick to middle-grade books even for my personal reading. There is something about this age group and the style of writing that will always speak to my teacher's heart. This blog post is not just about documenting the books I read but about creating a meaningful space to explore the power of stories. I wanted to provide a place where you can see the notebook, the overall process, and maybe grab some inspiration for your reading journal along the way.

One of the things that I love the most about journaling and the journaling community is the atmosphere and feeling that go into getting your thoughts down on a page. Then, add in the stress release of bullet journaling, feeling organized, and getting the running to-do list of groceries, errands, and work down out of your brain and on to the paper as well. Journaling is literal therapy you carry around with you on-the-go. Some of the best feelings is setting and establishing the tone and ambiance of journaling. Enter hygge. Hygge is not a new concept on the blog because it is a light feeling of happiness from self, things, surroundings and places, and even people. This post has a free 30 day hygge journal notebook prompt, and it contains some hygge tips for setting up your journaling atmosphere. Pick what you need from the 30 prompts or check out the 7 days of prompts to get you started and feel inspired in any notebook.

The idea of passion projects is not new. However, the idea of the passion project being the medicine we need during tough or uncertain times is an idea that becomes relevant and clearer as we move forward year after year. I was having a conversation with teacher friend, and we talked about the importance of having ideas that “set our brains on fire.” In other terms, having hobbies, goals, and dreams that we think about with as much interest, happiness, and concentration as possible. These are the ideas that get you up at 4 in the morning…in a good way. As teachers, the idea of learning and discovering new things is one of the reasons why we teach. We like to see the lightbulb moments in our students. The ah-has. The moments of change that we find meaningful. But, we often forget that learning is something that drives the inner motor of the teacher, too. 

This post outlines 10 ways we can find our own light.

It is time we find what feeds us especially right now with all of the school closures.

And even more so, after the closures. Because something that anchors me through all of this is the idea that we will come out of this somehow changed for the better. Passion projects are activities that we find meaningful because they feed into two parts that are essential to our teaching: Mindfulness and productivity. Mindfulness in a way that feeds our sense of calm, sense of purpose, and who we are and want to be. Productivity in which teachers need something that pushes them to not just be busy, but busy with intention. We are natural multi-taskers. We are magicians with time because we make the impossible happen each and every day in our classrooms.

And now it seems like the magic may be gone for a while.

Grab your copy of Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab! Let’s get started for the month of August!

Upon reading this book for the first time, I was immediately drawn to the strong connections between wanting a work-life balance and constantly feeling disappointed by my past attempts to try to put anything that resembles self-care into place. I have always thought that self-care was an elusive idea that people aren’t ever really able to achieve. I thought this way until the moment that I read this book. Then, I realized that self-care (or the lack thereof) was largely the boundaries that we hold within our own selves, other people, and our time. While personal boundaries are something that I often do not struggle with in my life, I do struggle with work boundaries and creating a separate space for my life outside of teaching and learning. 

I think every teacher has been in a situation where they wanted to run from their own classroom. Perhaps, if you are reading this, you want to currently bolt. Leave the keys on the desk. Grab your cold coffee and dreams of teacher inspiration and speed out of the parking lot. Tire tracks left behind you. This would be more than easy to do on many days throughout the school year.

But, the thing is you really, really care.

The fact that you care so much is the perfect starting point.

Teacher burnout is evident and almost inevitable, and sometimes we have particular classes that are more challenging than others. In my time in education, the repeated conversation of “what hour” was your rough hour or what grouping of students seemed to present the most challenges, both academically and behaviorally. This one class or grouping can be a contributing factor for teacher burnout but also presents a challenge because there is a mental block to tackle when working with a hard group day in and day out. This post has 5 steps you can take to reset any challenging class or group of students. It is meant to serve as a place of inspiration and hope because sometimes all we need to do is figure out some sort of a game plan to come back and try again tomorrow.

Teachers have been asking for help for years all the while doing the work of multiple professionals in one work week. Between lesson planning, grading, communication to home, activities, and the actual working with kids during the school day, teachers have long been burning out. The newfound trends with AI (Artificial Intelligence) have taken the world of business by storm, with many saying that “you are behind if you aren’t using AI.” Yet, as a former classroom teacher, I was hesitant to check it out. It felt like plagiarism. It reeked of cheating. But, then I adopted a new approach:

What if AI can help teachers do the tasks that take up so much time so that teachers can actually focus on the work of teaching kids?

This post explores the transformative potential of AI in the secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. AI has rapidly evolved, paving the way for innovative educational tools and resources that can empower educators to create dynamic and personalized learning environments. In the realm of secondary ELA, AI can serve as a virtual assistant, offering a plethora of benefits ranging from lesson planning and differentiation to supporting English as a Second Language (ESL) and English Language Learners (ELL) students. With AI by your side, you can unleash your creativity, efficiency, and effectiveness as an ELA educator. Specifically, let’s look at how AI can help out with the everyday tasks of teaching including lesson planning, activity preparation, and differentiation to be inclusive of all types of learners.

I became a teacher in 2010. I decided that I wanted to go into teaching when I was in high school, and I have never looked back…until now. When I started Writing Mindset in 2017, I wrote about the frustrations that happened within the field of teaching. Things like grading, lesson planning, and feeling like I was running a never-ending race of papers, emails, and strategies to reach young readers and writers. I always felt like I belonged in my classroom, if only I could get the amount of paper under control or figure out how to self-care my way out of stress. 12 years is a long time to try to get the balance thing right, and the secret is, that there is no balance.

Teaching is a work of the heart.

“Something has to happen…” This is what I said to one of my teaching colleagues at school regarding the level of stress, burnout, and fatigue that we were all experiencing.

I have said this in previous years, but now going into a full two years this March of teaching in a pandemic, alterations need to be made to my strategies of self-care that are realistic and adjust to the new normal of teaching and motherhood. My life has changed in a multitude of ways in the past two years.

1.) Virtual teaching and the Covid-19 pandemic created an atmosphere where we lost boundaries we never had. Teaching moved itself into our living rooms. We taught with our children on our laps, in our living rooms, and with dinner cooking during staff meetings.

2.) I became a mama. Now with an almost toddler, I am still trying to navigate my schedule on a daily basis as a classroom teacher and what that looks like after bedtime.

Classroom teaching has remained unchanged. It is just as hard as it was before, but my overall tolerance for inadequate systems is becoming something that can’t be ignored anymore. When we moved back to in-person learning, the education system as a whole tried to hold on to the things that were good about virtual learning, but we quickly fell back into old habits, routines, and schedules. We lost the social-emotional learning aspects of teaching that were so important and needed for so many children. But, we also remembered that realistic self-care wasn’t just wanted for teachers; it was needed. This post is a declaration of boundary-setting and some strategies I am going to propose regarding setting actual healthy boundaries with the profession of teaching as a whole. I am beyond wanting band aid fixes. I acknowledge that I do not have all of the answers, but one thing I know is clear: I can’t keep doing business as usual.

I am republishing this post when I normally would have set my school alarm. I am raising my not-cold yet coffee to all of the teachers on winter break. We made it, but more importantly, we must take care of ourselves in order to care for others. Winter Break is the time of year when teachers get to rest and rejuvenate. These two weeks are more than trying out new self-care strategies, focusing on wellness or adjusting our overall mindset. I am trying to move past the buzzwords and embed some of these practices into my life so they become not just the norm or routine, they are my automatic responses to dealing with the stress and chaos of teaching. These two weeks are vital in how we will work with our students for the remainder of the year. We must pour into our own selves just as much as we help others. Our health is their health.

How will you spend your winter break? Here are 115+ different ideas on how you could incorporate some self-care into your winter break broken down by mental tips, physical tips, practical tips, social tips, writing teacher-specific tips, and general teaching self-care tips. I have also added in some mama self-care at the end of the post!

In the midst of summer break, I wanted to take some time to discuss the number of teachers who are leaving the profession as a whole. There is a mass exodus of teachers who are retiring early or leaving positions due to the work load, the toll of the past school year, and the general atmosphere that is education in the current social and political state. It is also now the norm when I run into people I haven’t seen in awhile to ask me: “Are you even returning in the fall?” The assumption is I would run from the experiences of the past 2020-2021 school year. The prediction is that I would leave teaching, and if I said that I wouldn’t be returning in the fall, I would be met with an all-knowing look of “i get it.” I acknowledge that the teaching and education job culture and climate has reached a critical mass of unrealistic expectations that are demeaning and unhealthy. However, this isn’t the first time many of us have contemplated leaving the field of education.

The idea of leaving teaching is one that I have spoken extensively about on the blog for many years. The first post sparked many of the other posts that really got my blog going back in 2017. I spoke about the paper load and the time spent outside of the classroom on teaching-related tasks. The second main one addresses why I stayed teaching for over 10 years (at the time of the post publishing) and continued to come back each year. I said in that post: “I hate the amount of paper and workload we have, the criticism that teachers face, the growing pressure to “fix” the achievement gap, standardized testing, stress and stress eating, the absurdity of sub plans, and the growing anxiety we feel related to work.” This was before the pandemic happened and virtual learning took place.

As a teacher, it is easy to find yourself in a state of being pretty negative at school. Not necessarily with the students, but with other teachers and staff in the building. The cycle of negative talk-particularly negative teacher self-talk- is one that can consume school buildings in various spots, in entire hallways or sections, and in entire buildings. It manifests into people not wanting to come to work. Think about it like the culture and climate of your brain. The thoughts that we are thinking when we wake up, the ideas that cross our minds throughout the day while we are making millions of decisions, and the contemplations that we feel driving home are all indicators of who we are as people and where we are at in terms of self-care and belief about our work. Simply, we are our thoughts. This post is all about the connection our thoughts have to our actions and bodies. If we can talk about negative teacher self-talk in a way that helps combat fatigue and negativity in the workplace, we have a shot at changing our point of view. First, recognize the signs of negative teacher self-talk in yourself and in others:

1. Significantly reduced patience with classroom management (Quick to snap)

2. Increased levels of stress and anxiety

3. Trouble sleeping or waking up with a 3 am a to-do list

4. Taking work home to your significant other or family in a counter-productive way or bottling up completely about the issues at work to appear like you are fine

5. Lack of creativity or energy in lesson planning or delivery

6. Not wanting to get up to go to work for repeated days in a row

I often go speak to pre-service teachers at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI. It is right down the road from my school building, and I love answering questions about teaching. It makes me a bit giddy. However, I have started to realize over the years that I am answering the same questions and some questions-that are really important-never come up. I wanted to make a post to outline the questions that I think new teachers should be asking before they step foot into a classroom, and then offer some words of advice or encouragement about each question. The post shows the 10 questions that I think matter to pre-service teachers and new teachers in the field. The hope is if we start having the conversations now with new teachers, the hard parts of teaching won’t catch anybody off guard. The goal is always for teachers to keep teaching, even when we think it is impossible.

During this past week of school, I had a realization that the newness of the back-to-school season was starting to wear off. I found myself getting used to routines with remote teaching, and I felt like I finally had some organization to my day-to-day schedule again. With this feeling, almost always comes the anticipated dread of the stacking up of the paper pile. Whether this stack is in-person or virtually in a Google Classroom, this pile can feel draining. I can insert other words all associated with burnout. I wanted to do a round-up of posts about grading in general on the blog that I have used throughout the years. Some of these posts are more general posts about grading categories, reflections on blocking out time, and trying to manage the load. Some of these posts are about specific ways that I work through larger assignments to give feedbacks (Hello, conferences and using rubric codes). You will also see a vulnerable post that started the blog in 2017 where I admitted that working through the giant stacks of paper is one of the reasons I would ever consider leaving teaching. As teachers, managing the to-do list and paper load is one of the most important points we make in our own self-care. My hope is that you find a strategy that lightens the stack you have growing on your teacher's desk or in your inbox. Check out these 15+ posts to inspire your grading routine.

I waited tables at a restaurant during college as many did during their formative years. I hated whenever I had to order something OTF or On The Fly. Why? Because immediacy demanded attention out of me, the cook line, and everyone else around me. I would dare say that the entire field of education operates under OTF standards. Everything is an emergency in education, yet there is no fear like the fear that sets in when sub plans have to be made. In my 105 Ways to Make the Most of Winter Break post, I remind everyone to schedule in those sick days...even if you aren't sick. However, the ultimate fear of scheduling sick/sub-days-planned or not planned-is making sub plans. These lessons take hours, are a giant hassle, and sometimes will get printed or set up correctly, and then sometimes not. Now, with the move to online learning, it is important to adapt to this type of environment as well so that creating sub plans is easier even in virtual teaching. I think this transition will change how sub plans are done forever as we move to everything being available online. This post strives to give 25 different sub plan ideas and more for the writing teacher. These could be used for any teacher, but they are particularly helpful if you are an English teacher that focuses on writing.

I am always on a mission to find more comfort and joy in life. Naturally, I became more curious about how I could infuse my classroom and the act of teaching with more comfort and cozy as well. I stumbled upon the word “hygge” on Pinterest after posting a few photos of rainy days, coffee cups, and twinkle lights as backgrounds. I love all things cozy, but the idea of taking this idea of coziness and comfort into the classroom didn’t hit until I started to read more and post more about hygge. I really don’t envision my classroom at school being filled with candles and everyone sipping peppermint tea like we are at a cafe, but I do see how some of the mantras from the practice of hygge can transfer over into the classroom and create an atmosphere of happiness. I think it is also important to consider the importance of comfort and cozy in the role of online learning. While I know many of us can’t makeover entire corners of our homes and online learning classrooms, some of the ideas in this post can apply to make ourselves feel a little more at ease while teaching from home. Hygge is about comfort. I am hoping that some of the ideas with hygge in this post lead to more happiness in my classroom and home, and therefore, lead to better wellness for me and my students.

According to The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (The Happiness Institute Series) by Meik Wiking, “The word hygge originates from a Norwegian word meaning “well-being.” For almost five hundred years, Denmark and Norway were one kingdom, until Denmark lost Norway in 1814. Hygge appeared in written Danish for the first time in the early 1800s, and the link between hygge and well-being or happiness may be no coincidence” (ix). Let’s start with how you pronounce hygge. To sound it out, you would say “hue-guh.” Like the hues of the sun and guh rhyming with duh. Hygge is “about an atmosphere and experience, rather than about things” (vi). In short, hygge creates an atmosphere of calm and comfort in everyday things and experiences we all identify with naturally, and then these feelings create a sense of happiness.

The end of August and the beginning of September marks the official kick-off of back-to-school. Many of you have probably been planning for a while. Some of you may be still working out the first few weeks of plans for your classroom. Wherever you are in the planning process, this post is designed to give you some sparks of joy and added creativity in your planning and in your adjustment in the closing out of summer. If you have reached a dead-end, (like I had earlier this week) browse the posts below to find one that may help insert some much-needed inspiration into your plans or your own personal routine. You will find some posts about teaching including ideas for classroom activities, literacy instruction, and how to structure your class setup. You will also find mindset posts about anxiety, stopping negative teacher talk, and remaining uncomfortable as you approach this school year with a focus on anti-bias and anti-racist teaching. I know this school season of 2020-2021 is unlike any other we have faced in the world of teaching; however, I know we can do this through the collaboration of ideas and helpful reminders to see the good in all situations.

We can do this. I promise.

I’m not sure I knew that summer burnout existed before this year. There are a ton of possible reasons as to why I am feeling this way. Perhaps, it is the residual burnout from spring online learning, the haphazard end to the school year, or now the impending question of what is to come of the fall. Maybe it is all of the above. Maybe it is more. As I wake up each day to uncertain conversations about what should take place versus what needs to take place and nobody seems to be in agreement with anybody else, I find myself doing a lot of listening and observing. I also find myself wondering how to plan ahead for what I know will be a hard school year this fall.

But, I am certain that this summer burnout is something that I know other teachers are dealing with as well. I see the posts from others each day. I carry many of the conversations with me as I speak with other families, parents, and teachers about what they think of the fall. Many are afraid. Many are overwhelmed. Many are just confused. Summertime is normally the teacher’s time to thrive. Even in the past if I chose to teach summer school, I would be writing every day. I would be reading tons of books, and I would be doing a lot of planning in the form of dreaming for the fall. I normally have a “summer stack” of books that I happily go through and think big in terms of changing how I do business or trying to be a better teacher.

But, I am tired. More than tired.

The move to online and distance learning has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, feelings, and actions. I have simultaneously felt like I am not doing enough, and then in another moment, I am trying to tackle all of the things to make myself feel better, more productive. I am asking myself,

“Are you reading enough?”

“Are you writing enough?”

“Are you thinking enough about what matters? The work that has to be done when we go back?”

“Are you sleeping?”

All of these are check-ins with normal routines and behavior. However, we aren’t in a normal routine or behavior mode. This is something different. I have noticed that many of my first reactions to emails, news feeds, blog posts, and videos about distance learning come with “knee-jerk” reactions that make me feel well,...like a jerk. I started last week working purposefully to get myself out of negative reactions immediately, and then focus on the positive aspects of all situations.

During the course of the past month, I have watched other teachers and people in education take on distance learning with full force. What teachers are doing is powerful. The expectations and protocols to move online and the variances from district-to-district are also stifling. Some are being asked to do too much, other teachers not as much. The moral compass of all of this begs the question, what is right in all of this? My answer would be whatever is best for children and creates a positive response in both you and your online classroom. This blog post outlines how to use your journal to shift to positivity, and it uses many negative reactions as writing prompts to get you thinking about your own mindset.

Sometimes we need to make our own positivity.

The TED Talk tagline of “ideas worth spreading” is a powerful message about sharing the power of the human voice to transform the everyday experience. Whether it is Luvvie Ajayi urging us to step outside of our comfort zone or Shonda Rhimes telling us to slow down and enjoy the power of play, we learn from shared human experience. A TED Talk is a teacher. A voice that can reach out and inspire others to feel something different or think about something in a new way. Teachers are living TED Talks each day. However, the work of being a living TED Talk in education can be exhausting. The work we do is heavily reliant on our communities and each other when we feel like we are tired, discouraged, or on the edge of burnout. This post is a collection of 10 TED talks that are compiled for the purpose of inspiration to the classroom teacher or person in education who needs to find a small nugget of truth to feel rejuvenated and refreshed. The small “ah-has” are where we find the strength to continue to find meaning inside and outside of our classrooms.