The Minimalist Educator Podcast
A podcast about paring down to focus on the purpose and priorities in our roles.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 073: Revisiting Our Book, The Minimalist Teacher with Tammy and Christine
Tammy and Christine revisit their 2021 book "The Minimalist Teacher," reflecting on which concepts remain relevant in today's educational landscape and the ongoing conversations they're having with educators about minimalist approaches.
• The Triple P funnel (Purpose, Priorities, Paring Down) helps teachers declutter instructional practices and assessment strategies
• Teachers often feel overwhelmed by excessive resources and materials that weren't designed with their specific students in mind
• Creating boundaries around when to check emails and limiting digital clutter can reduce cognitive overwhelm
• The concept of "teaching with fidelity" must be balanced with responsiveness to student needs
• Creating a culture of minimalism focuses on preventing burnout and reconceptualizing all forms of waste
• Educators experience not just physical waste but emotional, cognitive, and temporal waste that drains energy
• Building emotional intelligence and creating transition times in meetings helps educators manage stress
• Setting boundaries around venting time can help process frustrations without derailing productivity
If you haven't yet picked up a copy of "The Minimalist Teacher," it's still available to purchase at any online book shop.
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Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Educator podcast. A podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher book, tammy Musialski-Borneman and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Minimalist Educator podcast. Today we are diving into something really special our book, the Minimalist Teacher, which was published back in 2021. It's been a few years and today we're taking a moment to reflect on which parts resonate with us still in the conversations we're continuing to have in this area. And, yes, it's still available to purchase, so if you haven't yet picked up a copy, it's not too late. So, whether you've already read it or just discovering it, we're excited to share our favorite parts that still feel super relevant in our work today. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today, christine and I are going to be chatting about a couple of our favorite parts of our first book, the Minimalist Teacher. Before we do that, though, I have to, of course, check in with Christine. How are you doing today, christine?
Speaker 2:I am very well. I'm happy to be looking back at our book the Minimalist Teacher. It makes me a bit nostalgic for the time we spent writing it and sharing it out to the world and having so many great conversations with people around the world about the book. So I'm glad to be diving back in.
Speaker 3:How are you? I'm good about writing this. Um, maybe that's one of our next episodes that we record together is just talk about that, the writing process, because we're we went through that during I mean partly during covid first and then, um, you know, another writing process recently, so for some new writing, so maybe that's something we talk about in one of our episodes, just thought be be good to know if people would be interested, so let us know if that's an interesting topic for you listeners.
Speaker 2:Okay, tammy, you're gonna start us off here with your a favorite of yours. Obviously, the whole book is a favorite, but what is a favorite of yours? Obviously, the whole book is a favorite, but what is a favorite of the favorites?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. So when I was flipping through there's, I'm kind of drawn to the instructional chapter decluttering instruction and assessment.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:And I think maybe well generally, because, like you know, teaching is a fun thing to do, it's enjoyable and it's very strategic and creative and all those things. And I do feel right now that in my work with coaching teachers, a lot of our conversations come around one of the questioning funnels. Come around one of the questioning funnels. So in the book we have our triple P funnel and, for those of you that don't know, one of our first episodes was on our funnel. But the funnel is purpose, priorities and paring down, and so in each of the chapters we have a series of questions to help people find the purpose in that element of the book. So in this case I'll talk about the instructional and assessment strategies. So finding the purpose, prioritizing through that and then paring down just to the essentials so that you can focus on, like that aspect that you're working through. And so I'm finding that a lot of teachers have been overwhelmed with resource materials.
Speaker 3:So I don't know if you experience that with your teachers probably, and there's this sense of like scatter right, so like, even if teachers have the programs they are, just like, it's just way too much for me to learn and I don't know how to fit it all into my time and you know, this doesn't really work for my students and that kind of thing. So, like, really good discussion points, and so some of the conversations that I've been having has been really focusing on, like in the in the funnel itself, we have like the upper level questions which are like OK, what's the purpose behind this instructional strategy or this resource, that kind of thing. And then we talk about the priorities once we're like OK, well, the purpose here is like, this is what I'm teaching here. But then when we start looking at some of the priorities, like general overarching priority question might be well, what's the priority in your instruction or assessment for that day, this period, that student, and what are your priorities when you're designing the instruction? So I think and feel free to jump in because I'll just rattle on for a while here but, um, but there's teachers forget that they're the teacher sometimes and they're in control of what they bring to their students.
Speaker 3:And so I've had a few conversations about the design. So like, yes, you have these materials, but the publishers of that book don't know who's in front of you. Like, this is a general guide, so they give you plenty of ideas and they give you the content, but they don't know specifically the kids that sit in your seats. So they kind of forget that they have the ability to take what's there in front of them and design it for their students. And so sometimes that feels again overwhelming because they're like well, it's already in the book and why am I like redoing it? I'm like, but you're not redoing it. One of the one of the things that I've told teachers is like, cause, a lot of the materials are digital right, so all the tabs are open and the screen is like got all the stuff on it and I'm like just read through what you're teaching for that day or that week then, close your computer and just think about okay, what do I actually need to teach this week?
Speaker 3:What's our objective, what's the expectation, whatever the language is, what's the learning target? What's the learning target, summarize it and then design what you're going to teach yourself. So you are still going to go into your guides and use the text and use some of those strategies, but just really pare down, like once you know what your priority is, after you've read through everything and done your mental summary or written summary, just pare down Like what do you actually really need to teach this? Like on Monday or Monday to Wednesday, and that's helped some teachers. Just be like, oh, actually, yeah, I kind of thought I always had to have everything open. So I'm looking at all the things and I'm like, no, don't, that's just like it's a really bad idea and it's like bad for you mentally to have all that visual clutter.
Speaker 3:First of all, and then, it just like stresses you out. So it that's been an interesting set of conversations with a few different teachers, because I've you know I'm hearing similar things. What do you think about all that?
Speaker 2:I think that's important to note, and even adding on to that is you may have adapted or modified something once for one group of kids, but you may need to keep doing it because your kiddos that are in front of you in the following years are not necessarily going to be needing exactly what you adapted the first time. So it is. It is kind of part of part of the deal is that you've got to keep being responsive, uh, to the people that are in front of you, right? So yeah, that that that published book isn't going to meet the needs of everyone year after year after year. There's just no way, like we're human beings, there's no way that it's going to be the right thing for everybody.
Speaker 3:Right, and some schools not many that I work with, but I've had this experience where you're told by your administrators like we're teaching this with fidelity and that can mean different things right.
Speaker 3:So, like, does that mean you're just teaching, you know, lesson one this day, lesson two the next day, or does that mean like you've got to use all the stuff that's in there, because that's a different type of fidelity? So I think it's important to understand what that means as people, instructional practitioners, right, Like it's not reasonable and I hope to think that you know administrators or curriculum coaches are not making teachers teach all the things because I mean there's just not enough time anyway, so it's not realistic.
Speaker 3:But when we're talking about teaching with fidelity, it's like, yes, we're going to use this unit as it is in this pace, and so we're all going to try to stick together. But within that, we have to ask the questions is this going to meet the needs of the students that are in front of me? And if not, I'm not going to do that or I'm going to modify it. And so I think that's a really important thing to just distinguish between is what does that mean if we have to really teach it to the book versus like, how much do we get to modify? And that kind of thing? Because that can relieve some of the stress for teachers too, because, like, that is a pressure right to stay with the pacing guide and with your other counterparts on your grade level, but it's also just you have to to move along too. So that's why we have pacing guides to help us out. But it's like we can't. If our students need more time with something, we have to provide that time. And then you know we've talked about planning and buffers and things like that in the past. So it comes down to how that's going to look long-term as well.
Speaker 3:But yeah, one of the key questions in this section of the funnel that I often talk about with teachers is how can we effectively differentiate to meet all learners' needs without getting complicated? And I think now that becomes more of a universal design for learning approach, right? So if we have planned out, if we're using our resources that are in front of us, or if you're creating your own curriculum, you know, either way you're looking at your students first and then you're looking at, okay, well, here's our standard that we're going to meet, how are we going to approach this? And so often I feel like that feels like the most uncomplicated way to look at it, right, like starting with them and the standard and then like, okay, well, how are we going to build out from there there? Because then you're not starting with the resource first and then trying to fit your kids into it, which is what teaching is a lot of the time, and that's I mean we have to plan like that because that's what we have. But what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:no, I think. I think this is a really important discussion because it comes back to that purpose, part of the filtering down of the funnel because you have to first know what is our purpose in using this material. Is it to follow it like a script, day by day, page by page, because that is going to lead you to very different priorities and what you can and can't pare down? Or is the purpose of this a resource that we can pull from or adapt or modify from, because those are two very different purposes that are going to lead you in very different directions? So I think, yeah, bringing it all back again to that funnel and starting with the purpose is so crucial when you're dealing with those instructional materials, because without a clear vision of the purpose, you can kind of end up wandering down the wrong path, can't you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's an ongoing conversation conversation too.
Speaker 2:I've been having.
Speaker 3:So, like some teachers, they really their mind is just really hooked into. I have all this stuff and I'm overwhelmed, and it's been hard for teachers to kind of get past, even with the coaching, like, okay, well, let's think about what we're doing here, what's? What is the purpose of all of this stuff, or what's the purpose of this, and how are we trying to navigate what your priorities are while meeting the needs of your students? And so bringing the students to the forefront has been really helpful for teachers to kind of refocus on, like what they're doing in the classroom, because it's, it's about them, right it's about are they going to meet the expectations?
Speaker 3:am I providing the best kind of learning opportunities that I can, or am I just delivering this content, because that's what I feel like it can do?
Speaker 3:So this kind of student focused, student centeredness of the conversation is helpful to teachers, especially at this point, because I know this is going to like time date us in our podcast a little bit, but we're like midway through an academic year and so sometimes you know you're getting to the point where you're like I'm getting, like I'm getting more lost, like I feel like there's just so many things happening right now and so re-centering on okay, let's look at how your students are progressing. Let's look at this student work sample Like what else? What direction do we need to go? So just kind of making it less complicated by just paring back the resources and just focusing on students is super helpful. So I don't want to like monopolize our podcast recording time with, like my rambles about that, but it's's just. I think that's such an important part of the book even though there's like lots of important parts but that that triple p funnel and particularly like in this moment in time, I feel like that really speaks out to me is that instructional funnel?
Speaker 2:yeah, absolutely yeah, I. I mean, there's so many, there's so many good bits isn't there.
Speaker 2:But well, that might be biased but so many so many, um, so many, so many parts that bring back good memories and a good reminder, even even for myself, I think I think I want to touch on. So yeah, chapter one we we're looking at creating a culture of minimalism in the classroom and, interestingly enough, the way the chapter is organized is kind of following the triple p funnel that you were just talking about, tammy. So we start off with with the purpose what is the purpose behind creating this culture of minimalism? And then it goes into some priorities. So I would like to just read this first little paragraph here around what the purpose is. So this is how it starts off.
Speaker 2:The term culture can bring to mind a variety of different images or meanings. This can encompass anything from language or food to the arts or family structures. Ultimately, a culture is a shared set of values and practices that are held by a group of people. A culture of minimalism requires members of a group, in this case your classroom, to recognise and work toward making use of currently available resources and know more in order to best support the requirements and expectations of the community. While a minimalist culture in classrooms may seem unconventional, overly innovative or unrealistic, now this approach is becoming more and more socially acceptable. Rather than superficially attempting to meet students' needs by buying things, adding more tasks or creating more paperwork, there is a shift to instead maximise existing resources in the community and create a lifelong practice and lifestyle of appreciation, efficiency and sustainability.
Speaker 2:Reach, yes, right, and I feel like that is still very true that people are trying to think about what is sustainable, what is meaningful, what is thoughtful, and appreciating what we already have. So I think that that is still true, even though it's a couple of years since the book has come out. True, even though it's a couple of years since the book has come out. And then I want to turn a little bit to the top three priorities in creating this culture that we've put out here. So priority one is positive well-being and avoiding burnout. Priority three is managing waste beyond the four R's. Yeah, and I think this is definitely still really relevant and something that we should be thinking about. I don't think educator wellbeing has improved.
Speaker 3:No At all, I don't think so either.
Speaker 2:Educator well-being has improved? No at all. In fact, I think it might have gone in a worse direction. It's worse. So I think it really is a priority for us to consider ways in which we can help in that arena, for sure. And I think we do need to reconceptualize what waste is, because we do often just associate the word waste with physical things, trash, things that we can throw away. But it is so much more. It is that emotional waste, it's that cognitive waste, it's economic waste that we are battling with all the time in this field. And then, when we talk about managing waste, we're talking about recycling.
Speaker 3:But also reusing, repurposing and repairing as well. Yeah, I think it's important for us to think kind of outside of the box when we are, when we are eliminating things, because, like when we are, when we are eliminating things because like it is daunting to have classrooms full of stuff and that's a real thing for every educator we know that people have moved classrooms and the previous teachers left stuff behind, thinking it's helpful and it's not. We have like there's just schools are loaded with things, and so that's often kind of the first thing that we think of potentially and it's a really tangible thing for educators to attach on to, because everybody can relate to that drain, the emotional drain and waste that just like we're talking about you know why.
Speaker 3:Why do we have schools in general? Because we're educating the next generation.
Speaker 2:That seems obvious, but we lose sight of that with all of this crazy minutiae when you say getting caught up in in the minutiae, that's what I think of is is things like email time suckage, that that has taken over what we do, and it it doesn't seem like we have choice in that yeah we can't choose not to read or respond to emails, does it?
Speaker 3:no, it't, and I think an important thing, though, to do is just have your set times when you are checking it, so that you are doing part of you know it's part of your job responsibility, but people can't tell you when to look at it, Right? So, like, maybe it's the first five minutes of your day, the end 10 minutes, depending on when the most messages are, and that's kind of it, because then we get lost in all of the stuff that like, and how important are those emails? Right, cause we also get spam that gets in there sometimes, and usually schools are better with having spam filters, but not always. And, um, yeah, I just think that you have to have the boundary for when you're looking at things and when it feels most appropriate and it doesn't cause you, uh, additional mental stress or like feeling like you're being pushed to constantly look at your communications when that's not our primary focus or it's not the only focus, right?
Speaker 2:yeah for sure, yeah for sure. You know, and I think, I think, coming back to those three priorities, you know really considering preventing that stress and overwhelm and, you know, really understanding all the different categories of waste that we're experiencing. I think that is a really poignant part of what we were trying to do with with the book, don't you think?
Speaker 3:I do and, um, when I've done conference sessions on this part of the book with people, so like teachers, coaches, admin will come into the sessions. And when I start talking about this kind of like reconceptualizing waste you know everyone's aware of all like the mental ways, the intellectual waste, they're aware of it, but I think you know making almost like naming it as waste, like not just time weight, because we're used to saying oh, that was such a waste of time or the waste of money, like that's common, but we don't often say that's such a waste of my mental energy and it is. There's so much of that and I think like there's some epiphanies that happen there, like know this is happening, but I didn't really think of it in that way and but it is.
Speaker 3:It is like a waste of a precious resource which is you, the person yeah like we are getting drained because you know there's just so many things to deal with.
Speaker 3:There's when we're dealing, when we're working with people, like there's just so many things to deal with, when we're working with people, like there's just so many layers of engagement and interaction that we just have become so used to it. But then when you put in some of these like traumatic things that happen at schools as well, whether it's like abuse or violence or like things coming from home, you know, families living in poverty all of that is and I don't like to call it mental waste, but it adds to the mental stress and the emotional stress that teachers feel and just feel and just being who we are as caregivers and educators, like we take that on without intentionally doing so. It's just part of our nature often and so it's hard to like not think about students and families when we're out of the physical school space and that just becomes. You know it's important that we're thinking about the people that we work with, but it's draining and it's a lot, it's a lot.
Speaker 2:It is? It's making me think. I want your opinion on something that I've gotten into the habit with. So I, just, while listening to you, you talk I've realized that quite often I will start a team meeting by saying, look, I had this on my agenda for something for us to do, you know, like talk about, you know, reflecting or looking at assessments or this new initiative that's coming up, but do we have the bandwidth to tackle this right now and not to put to the side the important work that we need to do?
Speaker 2:But I'm trying to be conscious of the fact that me spending the day talking to adults puts you in a very different mind space to people who are in front of the kiddos, and so you know we don't want to waste our time trying to tackle something we're not quite ready for, yeah, but also trying to acknowledge the fact that you might not be ready for it. You might be ready for it, but you might not be ready for this work right now. So do you think that's a helpful strategy or do you think sometimes we just need to get on it and get what we need to get done done?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I think that just leaving that space open to say I need a minute, like yeah it was a rough day Can we just have like a couple minutes to just like sit in silence or something like that.
Speaker 3:But I do. You know we do have things that are on the agenda that might be time sensitive and might not be, but I think providing that space at the start of a meeting just to have that check-in is I think teachers really value that, because then you're hearing, you know you're just leaving the space open for them to voice how they feel or what share. What's going on.
Speaker 3:One of the things that transformational coach Alina Aguilar she, she does something similar. Where she allows, she has this like transition period. So if she's meeting with teachers, she'll like verbalize okay, we're transitioning from a day of teaching that may have been great, may have been hard, whatever the thing is. Maybe something personal happened, but we are transitioning into this professional learning space and so we'll take two minutes to like do this Mindfulness or whatever it is that she has planned, and then we're going to shift into this work and so I think that, like naming that to where we're, we're transitioning from this space to that, recognizing this has been a great day, terrible day, whatever, and we're going to move forward because these are some of the things we still need to do for our students and for ourselves. So, like it's going to help our students, it's going to help us as teachers. It'll help clarify some things, whatever the task is. So I think that's a really valuable practice to I.
Speaker 2:I like that, I like the naming it, I like the naming it. But I think I might borrow that and try and build that in a little bit more, rather than just saying you know, are we ready?
Speaker 3:right, yeah yeah and and also like she talks about, because you know we also need venting space, but there's, um, there's I don't want to say effective venting, but like just enough and then too much. So there's like this boundary of time and I forget what the number is I want to say seven minutes or something but like everybody needs a little vent, um.
Speaker 3:And so being thoughtful about who you're venting to is one thing, but if there's a big thing that's happened at the school and people need to like voice their opinions, like setting a timer for a minute or two for people to just vent to, like a partner can just help unload some of that mental stress too, and then, same thing, we're going to transition and so we've had the vent. Now we're going to have like some kind of productive, like take a few breaths and then we're going to move into this Cause like it's the reality, right, there's frustrating things that come up and we're like well, you know that just threw my whole day off, because now I'm thinking about this other thing and we don't want things to derail our entire days when they know, but just saying it out loud can be very helpful to get it off your chest, she or she's.
Speaker 2:We've gone into another tangent here, but I love her work around creating norms as well oh, me too yeah maybe we need a whole other episode on. I think we do work on that. Let's make a note of that. But just to bring it back again, what we're talking about is like giving that space to try not to waste people's time and emotions and effort and to bring it back to that idea of building this culture where we're not burning people out, that we're actually being productive and efficient and hopefully joyful in what we're doing.
Speaker 3:I agree, and part of that is like we're building each other's emotional intelligence when we do these kinds of things as well, and when we have, you know, strong, emotionally intelligent adults, we translate that, can, you know? We build that into how we teach our students and that again, do well with what we have and not adding things to our plate I guess again, cliche, but you know it is a plate that's overloaded um, but when we can build a strong culture of like really focusing on what matters and we're just setting ourselves up for success yes, it is nice to look back at the work and and realize that it's still relevant and something that we care about, isn't it?
Speaker 3:it really is. It's definitely an evergreen approach to thinking, because we know it's lifestyle choices right comes from different lifestyles and just finding the value in what we're doing and not just doing things to do them or be frivolous or or just follow trends even, which is a thing that can happen. So it's nice to come back to those ideas of focus, finding clarity and doing the best that we can with what's in front of us. Absolutely Thanks for this discussion, christine. I'm realizing now we didn't necessarily do a paredown pointer, as we ask our guests to do, but I think that the pointer would be to, if you haven't read the book, give it a read and talk with some colleagues about it and, um, just kind of get this movement started.
Speaker 2:For sure, and I think we'll leave it there. So enjoy and we'll see you next time. Everyone, Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services forward-thinking educator support. Find out more at planzplservicescom.
Speaker 1:Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at planzpls on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti.
