Episode 101: Finding your Footing- Navigating Transitions as an Educator

First and foremost, YOU'VE GOT THIS! Remember who you are! :) Second, listen in! I've got some tips and tricks for you to navigate the transition you're facing, whether it is returning after a leave from the classroom, or you're starting at a brand new school! 

Don't forget to save your seat for my upcoming workshop: 5 Strategies for Building Community that Lasts! I look forward to seeing you there!

Register now to save your seat for this workshop and get the simple routines, systems, and strategies YOU need to build community that lasts WAY past September 15th.

Click here to save your spot!

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Transcript

Incredible Workshop!

Hey, it's me. And before you listen to this episode, I have to tell you about this incredible workshop that I am offering for free on the 20th and 23rd of August, called "Five Simple Strategies for Building Community That Lasts. If we invest the time very intentionally at the beginning of the year to build a kind of community where connection and communication thrive. When we hit those hard patches in November, where that apathy is really setting in, we don't have to worry about our classes beginning to feel just transactional because we will have built and invested the time in a community where students are taking risks in the target language are actually communicating and connecting with each other. So come and join me on the 20th or 23rd and hear these five simple things you can start doing now to ensure that you have a lasting community that you can thrive in along with your students all year long. The link is in the show notes, so go and save your seat. I literally cannot wait to set you and your students up for wild success this year.

Welcome!  

Welcome back to Teaching La Vida Loca, the podcast you come to for short and sweet and sometimes spicy episodes, full of enthusiasm, magic, and tips and tricks for your classroom. I'm Annabelle, your maestra loca, and I'm here to bring you inspiration, unapologetic authenticity, and ideas to spark more joy in your teaching journey. I'm turning up the excitement and elated to have you right here with me. I'm not just your host; I'm your cheerleader, and I'm thrilled you're tuning in. So, let's do this. Let's tackle teaching la vida loca together. Hi there. How are you? Welcome to episode 101 of Teaching La Vida Loca. I had plans for what I was going to record this week, and I'm pivoting because I have had countless interactions with people in the last week who are transitioning back into the classroom or transitioning into a new school, and these conversations have all had the same themes of navigating big transitions, navigating new transitions, and a lot of the educators I've spoken with have the same fears and the same doubts and the same misconceptions and I really would love to speak to that today in case you are somebody who perhaps is starting at a new school or perhaps you're coming back from maternity leave and you've been out of the classroom for a while, or perhaps you took a long sabbatical and a leave of absence to care for a family member, or perhaps you just took a break from the classroom and you're coming back after a few months, maybe a few years, maybe longer than a few years, and if you haven't been away from the classroom and you're just merely transitioning into a new role, or like I said, a new school, I think that you'll find this episode and the points that I have planned to talk to you on this sticky note. I think that you'll find them. I hope that you'll find them useful, and I want you to ground yourself and anchor yourself and feel more confident and remind yourself of just how capable you are. So, let's dive in.

#1

I'm going to focus on three different areas and kind of spitball within those areas. And the first is, I want to remind you that every feeling is valid. I remember when I was going into the classroom again last year after taking a year of maternity leave, I was honestly terrified. I was so fearful. I was fearful of going back, and especially because I have this following, I was like, "What if I get in there and I don't know what I'm doing? Also, I was transitioning from public schools, years and years and years of public schools, into an independent school, and I knew it was going to be different, and I knew my class sizes were going to be different, and just everything. It's like a different world, and I didn't know how I would fit in, how I was going to adjust. I didn't even know if I would remember how to teach, and saying that now feels like what? How did I feel that way? And those feelings were so real and so big for me. It was also this feeling of guilt of returning to the classroom and leaving maternity leave. When I could just make consulting my business. I could just make it a thing. However, I learned very quickly that that's not for me, right? And then feeling guilty around oh my gosh, I'm putting my baby into daycare, and this is going to be new for her too, and you know the thought of stepping onto a brand new campus, brand new classroom, setting it up in time when there was no prep time to be able to set up a new classroom. All of it brings a mix of excitement, self-doubt, nervous energy, perhaps even fear, and all of those are normal. That feeling of like almost that first year feeling, like first year teacher feeling, is normal. It doesn't matter how many years of experience you have; those feelings are real and normal. And I want to remind you that you don't need to figure it out all on day one. Your value as you, as an educator, is intact, and the transition is going to be a process. It's going to take time, and so I want to anchor yourself and ground yourself in your feelings are super valid. They are absolutely normal, and since I've had more than six of these conversations with people I care about, three different familia loca members, two different folks online, and a new colleague in person, I have said the same things, and I have heard the same things from them-the same fears, the same nerves, the same doubts, and it's all valid, and you don't have to figure it all at once. Okay, so that's our grounding.

#2  

Next, I want to talk to you about some, give you some practical advice, give you some reminders, and some action steps to like release that mental load, release some of those feelings, and really restore your confidence in yourself, your professional confidence. Right? Okay. The first is start small. Just start small. You do not need to overprepare every single detail of every single lesson. You do not need to have a scope and sequence detailed ready. Well, hopefully you don't. I guess it depends on the school, but you certainly do not have to have your entire classroom set up. I spent the entire day in my classroom today. I promise myself two Sundays per school year I will go in only two, not any more than that, and I used one of my Sundays today, and I was there most of the day, and my room is far from ready, so far from ready, and that's okay because I can collaborate with my students and build it as I go, especially in a world language classroom, I have the gift of adding to my world word walls as I go. What I do want is some core systems and routine structurally structures in place to make it easy, to make it easy to set those things up as students come, so you do not have to have it all ready. You don't need to have it all done. You can do that as you go. When we start small, it actually makes more sense because if you if you plan out an entire scope and sequence without meeting the kids that you're going to be teaching and figuring out what it is they already know, what sort of content they've already acquired, what language do they already have, what how were they taught before you? Do they have any background in the language without first knowing your kids-it's silly. It's to waste time, and I'm not saying that it would be a total waste of time, but it is far smarter to get in there, get to know them, and find your footing before you over prepare and then have to discover to change that you have to change everything. Right? Okay.

#3  

The next thing is and it's so important, and it can be really challenging, especially when you feel like you need to find your footing again. You need to set boundaries now, the very start of the year, around when you're going to leave school when you're going to check emails, when you are going to arrive at school, and I encourage you to leave school at school completely. Now, for some people, that might be a huge jump. I started leaving school at school 10 years ago, and I've never looked back. And I did it. I don't know that cold turkey is the right term here, but I just one day decided I'm not working from home anymore. I will work at school and school only on school stuff, and part of that is yes, I have a business, and I'm doing things like reporting, recording a podcast, or you know, running a familia loca meeting, those sorts of things. But nothing that I'm doing at home is at all related to the content that I'm teaching my students, the slides that I'm creating for them, anything like that, I'm doing at school. Okay, so start with setting boundaries about when you're going to leave school. Set a time, write it on a sticky note, and leave it very visible and commit to it. Commit to it for yourself. Also, commit to checking emails on your computer only, not on your phone. I was so excited that about 100 people this summer have let me know that they removed work email from their phone. I hope that they keep it off of their phone. I hope they don't put it back on their phone because work email, a lot of schools don't email very much in the summer, right? The emails come during the school year, and the second that you open yourself up to reading those emails when you're off, like let's say it's 5p.m. on a Friday, you open an email on your phone. You're already on you on your way home. You're walking into your child's daycare to pick them up, and it is an email from your boss saying, "Hey, I heard about this that happened in the classroom. I really need to get a better understanding before I communicate with the parent. Please let me know what happened. And you're like, oh my god, what happened? And you're trying to think through. Was it bad? Oh my gosh, what do I have to? The second you open any email, a parent email, a student email, hey, I gave you that assignment. Did you put in a grade yet? And they give it to you two hours prior at the end of the day on Friday. No, I haven't graded it yet. No, it's not in the system yet. Are you kidding me? All of your cortisol levels raise, and then even if you're disciplined and you're like, I'm not even responding this until Monday. It's Friday afternoon. It's Friday evening. Those thoughts are still living with you all weekend long. So, one take work email off your phone, and decide that you're going to check emails on your computer and decide what those hours are. Are you starting to check emails at seven in the morning, and is your hard stop time 4o'clock? What is your start and end time for checking emails? Okay, I could give you more around that. I could talk for an entire three episodes on email boundaries.

#4  

Okay, the next one is give yourself grace. Okay, under this idea of protecting your energy and protecting your boundaries, I really want you to give yourself grace because if you are stepping into this new year and like finding your footing again, and you are trying to do everything perfect right out the gate, it is literally your enemy. The perfection is the enemy of sustainability. Let's say that, okay. It's going to feel new some days. It's even going to feel chaotic, and that is okay because you're going to have those little boundaries in place. You're going to know when it's time to leave, and you're going to leave work at work. And especially for those of you who are coming back from maternity leave, and you have a new family, or maybe you have just a new child in that family, this is going to be really important so that you can leave work because it is mentally, emotionally, physically draining to be a teacher. We need to conserve that energy, what we have for our families. So, give yourself grace. Remind yourself that you're gonna. We have to take these small steps. It's not gonna be perfect right out the gate. In fact, we're all still working to be better. We're never all gonna be perfect at anything, and just take it one day at a time, one step at a time.

#5  

Okay, the next thing is to embrace being a learner again. So, we've gone through how to protect your energy and your boundaries. Next, we're going to embrace being a learner again. This is the number one thing that I can recommend for you, if you are going back, if you're going into a new school, or you're coming back after a sabbatical, back after a maternity leave, one of the best things you can do for yourself is ask questions without shame. If you're at a new school, you're going to ask all the questions: ask about the culture. Ask about procedures. Ask about unwritten rules. And then guess what? You're gonna ask those same questions again as many times as you need to until you remember them, because you're gonna forget. Because the first couple weeks at a brand-new school is so overwhelming, and there are so many people. Just the people. Just learning people's names and then student names. You're learning hundreds of people's names. It's so much, right? So, embrace being a learner again, and ask the questions as many as you have to as many people as you want. If you aren't automatically assigned a mentor. Find a person who has insisted. Please don't worry about asking me questions. Please ask me your questions. Say hey, would you be willing to be my mentor? What I would like to do is set up a Google Doc where I can just drop my questions, and then whenever you have capacity to go in there and answer them, that would be great. I just offered that to one of our new faculty. She has a mentor, but it's not a world language teacher. So, for her world language teacher specific questions, I said, "I'm just going to start a Google Doc. This is what I did with Teresa last year for myself, because I didn't want to feel bad about interrupting her. I didn't want to worry about bothering her during her setup time, so I just wrote all of my questions in a Google Doc, and I shared it with her. And anytime she had time or capacity, even to answer one or two, she would go in there, and it helped so much alleviate the worry. And I didn't delete the questions and answers, so I could go back and reference it. If I forgot an answer, it was so helpful all year. And then, on that same note of like, you know, we have to embrace being a learner again. Those routines that help keep teaching sustainable and help create balance for ourselves. Add those in gradually. So, focus first on creating classroom community and establishing like strong classroom management, building those relationships with kids, basic daily routines before you worry about.

#6  

Oh my gosh! I got to jump into that content. We're gonna reestablish our routines and just get back into the habit of. This is what it feels like to teach. This is how I'm starting. This is our daily agenda. I'm going to ease in because it will come. Right, the content will come. Just start first with those relationships and connections and community. Okay. Okay. The next part is reminding yourself that you are awesome and you are an educator. And coming back into the classroom after a transition doesn't mean you have to reinvent yourself. You just need to reconnect with what you love about teaching, right? Reconnect with why you came into this profession in the first place, and I want you to take a second to write that down. Okay, you're going to take a second. You're going to write down why, what, what got me into this? What got me into this in the first place. What was it? What is your why? And then once you have that down, and if you're in the car driving, please don't write. But I paused so that you could think. Why? What brought you into teaching in the first place? Okay, reconnect with that, and that alone-that pause, that moment, breathing three deep breaths and thinking, reconnecting with your why-will remind you. It will help remind you that you are an educator. You're an educator, and you're meant to be a teacher. And this is just a new place or a new chapter, new transition, right? And then remember that you are an educator, but you have a whole different and complex, beautiful human identity outside of teaching. So teaching is very much part of our identity, and we are whole people outside of the classroom as well. So, you might be a parent, you might be a partner, you might be a pet owner, you might be a creator, an artist, a musician, a gamer, whatever it is. I want to remind you that while you're connecting with your why, also just hold space for the person you are outside of work because it's going to make you a better educator inside, right? And that goes back to those boundaries, making those boundaries so that you can leave work on time to have energy to nurture your whole self, your whole identity.

#7  

Okay, and then the last section, the last thing I want to talk to you about, is finding community. Teaching can feel really isolating when you're starting at a new school. It's really important to figure out who the colleagues are in your school who lift you up, right? You, you. If you've been following me for a long time, then you've heard me talk a lot about those teacher workrooms and how it's really important to avoid them if there's a lot of toxic gossip going on or a lot of complaining. I mean, we can all complain. We can all complain until we're blue in the face, right? Every school has its issues, and it is better, if you have a teachers' lounge that is constantly negative, then you need to find the people that are eager to share the highlights of their day with you. That are eager to talk about what's going well. That are eager to ask you about what's going well. Right. So, finding the people that are going to lift you up, not just the ones who vent and vent and vent. Right. So, you're looking for colleagues who understand the importance of the micro moments of joy in our job, and then we also want to find people that we can connect with on that human level, on the people that our identities outside of the classroom. Because if you can connect with other moms or other parents who are also you know in this phase of life where they are juggling work-life balance and kids at home, kids at school, and maybe they're feeling exhausted, and they finding those people who understand what you're going through is going to help you so much with navigating new school transitions. So, finding those people who are in similar, you know, I don't know, seasons of their life that can also help so much. And this feeling of when you feel supported and connected and seen-that's what we also want to create for our students, right? Because if we feel connected and supported and seen, it's easier for us to bring that energy to the classroom, and that then transfers to the kids. Right, when they can feel that we feel supported and we feel connected, it's so much easier for us to do the same thing for them.

Brain Break!

Right, let's take a little brain break. Okay, okay, okay. This one's easy. It's been forever. A couple people were like, "I haven't heard you say brain break in so long with your growls. So, I was like, okay, okay, here we go. You're gonna make an OK sign with one hand, and it's like, if you don't know how to do that, then you put your pinky finger, your ring finger, and your middle finger up in the air, and you make a circle with your pointer finger and your thumb. Okay, that's the OK symbol in the United States. I don't know if it is other places too, and then with your other hand, you're gonna just do a thumbs up. So, your other four fingers are curled in, and you're doing a thumbs up, and then you're just gonna switch. I'm laughing because it's so freaking hard. I've actually gotten better at this over the years of practicing with my students, but I want you to keep switching hand to hand, and make sure that when you're switching, the OK sign has all three fingers up, and it's making a perfect circle with your pointer finger and your thumb, and the other hand is just a thumbs up with a clenched fist with just the thumb in the air, it is more challenging than you think. If you're driving again, do not do this brain break. You're welcome. Just a little brain teaser for you. You're welcome. You're welcome. That was fun, huh? That was so much fun.

Wrap Up  

Okay, on that note, so that we've talked about the importance of finding your people and seeking out community for yourself, and in doing so, you will be able to better support your students because that energy is going to impact them. Right when you are. It brings me to my amazing workshop that I have coming up both on Thursday this week and on Sunday. It is called Five Simple Strategies for Building Community That Lasts. And if you're not already registered, then you need to check the show notes for a link so that you can save your seat. I am so excited because I have worked really hard to really get specific with strategies and routines that you can start using at the very beginning of school year. And if you're already three years, three years, oh my gosh, three weeks in, you can totally use them. You can still implement them now. The whole point of this workshop is to show you how you can set strong foundations of finding connections within your classroom, helping students find those connections to build a classroom community where communication thrives and students feel seen, cared, and part of a collective community, they feel that sense of belonging, so that they are eager to be in your classroom space. They're not only eager to be there, but they're eager to participate. They're eager to communicate. They're eager to do so in the target language, because the more we can do this and front load this at the beginning of the year, the easier time we have when those behaviors start to emerge in October and November, other people might be struggling because they felt the need to jump straight into content. We felt the need and knew how important it was to first start with community because then we are setting ourselves up for success the whole year long, because students are driven. They're eager to be there, and they're ready to communicate in the target language. Because you've set up those systems to make it easy to do so, where they're not just wanting to. They don't even realize they're doing it. They're so bought in, right, and they're so comfortable and connected in your classroom space. That's what we want. So, if that sounds appealing to you, if you know you're somebody who wants that connected classroom community where communication thrives all year long, then check the show notes. Save your seat. You can choose between Thursday or Sunday. Anybody who attends live, you're going to get a brand-new resource that I've created that I'm actually using this coming week, my first week of school with kids, and I'm really excited about it. It's something that I've never done before, but I am positive it's going to go well because it focuses on them and it focuses on finding connections between them and others in the classroom. So, anybody who attends live is going to get that resource for free. And yeah, I just I honestly can't wait to connect with you this back-to-school season. 

Talk Soon!  

So, hope to see you there. And again, if you are somebody who is transitioning back into the classroom after a long stretch, or perhaps you're switching into a new environment. Don't be afraid to embrace being a learner. Don't be afraid to ask those questions. Set some boundaries for yourself. Decide when you're going to leave. Take your work email off your phone. Make sure you're only checking it between specific hours that you're gonna set now, and then just remember why you became a teacher in the first place. You've got this, and you're gonna find a community who can support you with it. Right? I am so excited to see you this week in my workshop, and I'm so excited for this year. I know it's gonna be a great one. You've got this. We've got this. And until next time, we will be teaching La Vida Loca together. Take care. Bye.