EP 120 Why I No Longer ‘Wing It’: Strategies to Plan My Week

Welcome educators! Before we start, I want to share an excellent free tool. It is “The Ultimate Guide to a Successful School Year”. In this guide, I walk you through how you can take those nervous jitters to have undeniable confidence throughout the school year. All because you started with these basic steps in the guide. 

Download the guide at myadventuresinesl.com/ultimateguide. 

We are going to start today’s episode with your reflection question. 

Have you been “winging it” with your lesson planning?

Take a moment to reflect on this question. Think about this question and answer yourself honestly about where you stand. 

So many of us start off the school year with a plan. A plan that was thought out and intentional. As the school year progresses, many of our projects begin to dwindle and we start trying to wing it day by day. 

I realized this was happening to me a few weeks ago when I had a disastrous week of lessons. I was creating my lessons day by day, I felt rushed, and I had overbooked my days. I found myself frustrated throughout the week. Even the students were like “Mrs. Williams, where is our daily message and goals?” When I thought about what I had done differently this week from the previous one, a blaring fact stood out. I simply did take the time to plan. 

I realized that it did not have to be an elaborate plan. An efficient and simple plan was all I needed to keep my personal and school life organized. For the upcoming week, I made sure to block out time during my planning period to plan out every part of my lesson. 

That planning time included printing, designing the slides for the week, and organizing the materials. I noticed during the struggle week that I had done the lesson plans, but I failed to completely design the slides and make the necessary copies. I knew that for the upcoming week, some things had to be different. So, I made sure to write down my plans and meetings for the week. Then, I included any personal appointments I had for the week. What also helped me was color coding my week to give me a visual overview of what activities I had planned. 

Here are some strategies that you can use: 

1. Start with doing a time inventory of your week. This is a strategy you can use to determine how you are spending your time throughout the week. 
2. Block off 15-30 minutes a day to dedicate to your planning. Each day is dedicated to something different. For example, designing slides can be done on Tuesday, and on Friday you can make copies for 15-30 minutes. 
3. Create a calendar system that works for you. For some people, a digital calendar works wonders for them. If you are like me, I need a paper planner. There is something about writing it down that reinforces it in my brain. The benefit of a digital calendar is the reminders. You can also use a combination of both. 

Take action! Pick one of the strategies above and use them in your classroom this upcoming week. How are you going to prevent yourself from winging it this month?

You can download the transcript here.