The Minimalist Educator Podcast
A podcast about paring down to focus on the purpose and priorities in our roles.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 074: Letters to Our September Selves with Christine and Tammy
Have you ever wished you could send a message back in time to your beginning-of-year self? That's exactly what we explore in this reflective episode as another school year draws to a close.
The transition between academic years often happens at breakneck speed, with little time to acknowledge how much we've grown and changed. Tammy and I share the letters we would write to our September selves, capturing the wisdom gained through challenges, surprises, and victories along the way.
Through honest conversation, we unpack key lessons that emerged this year. Tammy reflects on her coaching experiences and the feedback from teachers who've gained confidence and consistency in their practice. She wishes she had created better systems to implement the valuable professional learning she experienced throughout the year. Meanwhile, I share how I entered the year knowing I faced numerous major responsibilities, including school accreditation, and how I learned that "I can handle this" was the message I needed most.
Our discussion reveals how flexibility became a survival skill, especially when unexpected situations hijacked carefully planned agendas. We talk about the value of collegial relationships and how schools that prioritize teacher collaboration time see significant benefits in staff morale and effectiveness. We also touch on how certain episodes, particularly our "Partners of Educators" two-parter, resonated deeply with listeners.
The episode concludes with pare-down pointers that encapsulate our reflections: "Go gently with yourself" and "Keep it simple." These reminders to practice self-compassion and avoid overcomplicating future challenges offer valuable perspective for educators wrapping up their own school years.
Whether you're ending your school year now or have a few weeks remaining, we hope this episode encourages you to pause and reflect on your own journey. What would you tell your September self? What lessons will you carry forward? Connect with us @PlanZPLS on Instagram – we'd love to hear your reflections.
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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 Teacher Book, Tammy Musiewski-Borneman and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome back to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Thank you for joining us for one of our final episodes of season four. As another school year wraps up, we wanted to take a moment to slow down and reflect. It's so easy to jump straight into the next thing, but reflection is a powerful practice. It helps us notice what we've learned, how we've changed and what we want to carry forward. So in this episode, we're sharing something just a little bit different. We are sharing letters, thoughts, reflections for our past selves, back at the start of the year in September. It's our way of looking back at where we started and what the year has taught us. We've tried to be honest and personal and hopefully it encourages you to do the same thing. Give yourself some credit for what you've been making it through this year. Let's get into it. Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Minimalist Educator podcast. I am here with Tammy. How are you today, tammy?
Speaker 3:I'm doing pretty well.
Speaker 2:How are you, christine? I am good, I'm very well. How are you, christine? I am good, I'm very well. The sun is shining as we get towards closer and closer to summer holidays. So, yes, I'm getting excited about the change in weather.
Speaker 3:Yes, for sure, that time of year where schools and teachers are starting to wind down in some places, with schools closing for the summer at the end of May. I know you go a little bit longer because you start later in the year, but it's still wind down time and you know know all the things are happening right now.
Speaker 2:It feels like exactly, exactly, which brings us to our theme for today, our topic today. Tammy, we are almost doing like a letter to our past selves. Dear september me, what would we say to ourselves at the start of this academic year that's just about to end? What would be the message that we would send ourselves?
Speaker 3:Well, I think, before we can do that, I kind of feel like we have to go through the roller coaster that the year has been, because we definitely are not the same people we were a bunch of months ago. You know, similar but not quite the same. There's been some good things that have happened. We've had some good interactions with people teachers and students, um, and from those interactions we discover things about ourselves and others, and so I think it's interesting that we're talking about this, because this is one of the things I ask teachers at this point in the year as we're doing year-end meetings. So, you know, I ask them like give me some highlights from the year. You know what are you proud of? Give me some highlights from the year you know what are you proud of? Because you're not the same person you were when you started this year. You've, you know, had some growth with students, but also professional growth, and it's pretty interesting and really cool to hear what teachers' responses are.
Speaker 3:So I think that if I'm looking at you know people that I've worked with this year I'm not going to talk about myself yet, but some of the things that teachers are saying that you know this is this was not me several months ago was, um, you know, like I'm really proud of myself and the confidence I've built as a teacher over this year and I thought, you know, I had a couple of teachers say that and I'm like that's like really great for you to feel a sense, a better sense of like how you're teaching and what you're teaching. So that for me was actually a highlight, just having worked with a bunch of, you know, these same teachers. This year. I had another teacher say that she was really proud of how consistent she was with building in time for students to talk to each other this year too. So I thought that was a really good, you know, practical type of thing where at the start of the year maybe that wasn't a focus for instruction but became a really strong point of teaching throughout the year. So I thought those were some, some cool reflections from teachers that I heard that are top of mind for me right now.
Speaker 3:What's coming up for you?
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny that you say you're having those conversations, because after our most recent vacation break holiday break, whatever you want to call it I was talking to the teams about what their wins have been for the year so far, and it was just so lovely to see how many of the teams were talking about a win for them had been the teamwork and the collaboration that they've had with other staff members. Which I think brings us back to that idea that we always keep coming back to on this podcast is the importance of relationships, and that is just such a huge part of what we do, and so I feel like that was a good reminder of that that when you can feel that that is a win for you, you feel like you've had a great year when those collegial relationships are going well.
Speaker 3:So, um, yes, I've also been having those conversations yeah, I was talking to some teachers this week at well. I was at two schools wrapping up with them and one school does have that time for that collaboration and building their relationships together. The other really doesn't.
Speaker 3:And I was thinking how that really played a role in staff morale this year because didn't really have that together time unless I was with them for a PD and so it was really great to work with them, with, you know, during some of their PD times, because a lot of their meeting time had just different focus points, right, because they're, you know, looking at some you know, just different school aspects where it doesn't didn't require necessarily them to collaborate together, but it was like information dissemination or you know things like that. That doesn't really necessarily build relationships because you're just gathering information. But when we were together during PD times I could see how much they enjoyed that because they were engaged in what we were doing and questions were being asked and there was lots of interaction. And so I think, as like a September dear September, me as a coach, I would probably advocate more for teachers to have that time in some way, even though it's been a conversation, you know, at different points throughout the year with administrators.
Speaker 3:But I think I might have been like stronger with that, like people need to share their ideas, they need to be able to just have these different kinds of interactions between each other and and talk about the successes they're having with students based on you know cause. A lot of teachers did share with me that they did try out some of the things that we talked about, whether it was station teaching or just different discussion protocols for students, and I saw those in action and they went really well. But they don't get a chance to share what they tried out, necessarily, unless it's informal, you know in the hall or something. But we know that when we get that chance to have some kind of a structure for ourselves as adults in a professional learning like community um or a pd session, it builds morale, it makes people feel like oh yeah, that was a really great idea that you had.
Speaker 3:I'm going to try that in my classroom and so I think it would be something that I would advocate for more for teachers to have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what else is coming up for you? Because I know that you had a lot going on in your role. You had accreditation this year, so you were preparing for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, that's definitely what I'm thinking about when I think back to September me. I was very much aware, going into this academic year, that that I was going to have a lot on my plate. I was very, very conscious of that and, you know, as life goes, even more came up as we got into the year as well. So, yeah, so I mean yeah, at at school, yeah, I was leading us into this big new project and you know we've had our podcast as to keep going as well. As you know, another big project that I won't talk about much now, but we'll we'll tell you all about it soon. Um, you know, and then stuff going on in my personal life as well that required time and effort and attention as well.
Speaker 2:So I knew before the school year had even started that that this school year was going to be be massive, um, and so I think, if I'm looking back at September me, I would just say you know, you've, you've got this, you can do it, and I think I was trying to have that self-talk at the time. But you know, there's always that little bit of doubt, that little seed of like no, you cannot do all of this at the same time. Or you know, or you might be able to do it, but you might go crazy in the attempt to do it. So I think that message of you can actually handle this. You can do this. I think that would be a huge one, a huge little encouragement that I would love to send back in time to September May for sure would love to send back in time to September, May, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and having worked with you this year on the podcast and our and our other project, um, I've seen the variations of you which you know. Sometimes it was like, yeah, it's, it is what it is, we're moving along. Sometimes it was not so great.
Speaker 3:But, it's good to like think back that yeah, of course you're going to be able to handle it. It's going to be hard, and thinking to your future self next year is going to be totally different, because a lot of things are off your plate. So I mean, some things are starting to come off the plate now, which is great. As you wind down the year too, um, you know that's a really good reflection, cause I know it has been. It's been a year for you for sure. Still, standing.
Speaker 2:I'm still standing.
Speaker 3:You are, you are and you're still sane and and functioning.
Speaker 2:Let's hope so. Let's hope so yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm thinking about, too, some of the professional learning that I did for myself this year, this year, and I was fortunate to be able to go to a few coaching trainings which I found to be really helpful. So I went to a transformational coaching training. I went to the art of coaching teams, coaching for equity, and those are all from Alina Aguilar, so if you're a coach, you might be familiar with her work and, as I think back to that, I really valued the consistent approach in those learning experiences for myself and I grabbed certain things from there and built into my own work, so like team meetings, structures and questions that I used and things like that. But I would probably tell my September self to capture that learning in a way that is gonna help me sustain it and use it throughout the whole year. So, even though you know I have the learning guides and my notes and the books and things like that I needed at this point in the year, and not that I couldn't go back to things, but I feel like I needed a different way to ensure that I was using some of those really good questions that I was like, oh, I want to use that or oh, I want to try this experience to like get teachers to think about things in a different way. And as the years gone on, I feel like I mean I use the questions with teachers or like ask the questions that I felt like made sense at the time, right. But I'm wondering too, how could I have dug a little deeper with teachers if I had just captured a little bit more from my own learning and was able to bring it Because some of that first training was in September.
Speaker 3:Bring it because some of the that first training was in September. That was beginning of the school year. And so you know, just making sure I'm kind of still sticking with those things that I've learned and because there's some like really great activities and questions. But when I think about this, this last bit of time and doing wrap up meetings with coaches or with teachers, I'm like, oh, that could have been better, you know, because I feel like when I started the year I was stronger because I had that was like just fresher for me. So, you know, next year's a new school year. I still have a bit more coaching for the rest of this school year. Interestingly. I still have a bit more coaching for the rest of this school year, interestingly, even though we're wrapping up. But, yeah, something to think about for sure, just like my own learning journey. Capturing and implementation for a longer period of time yeah, if you have ideas for that, that'd be great. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's tricky, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Because it's one of those things when you do courses or webinars or read a book is you have to do something with it, or else it just kind of it fades, it disappears, so.
Speaker 2:So you do like you get so motivated and excited while you're doing the thing or reading the thing, um, but actually transferring it and applying it and keeping it front of mind is, I think it's an ongoing. It's an ongoing challenge. And I try and remember I worked with with wonderful teacher years ago and she used to say, like if she did a PD day or a course, if I just get one thing out of this, I'm happy. If I can just apply one new thing, I'm happy. And so I try and remember that, you know, because you know, in the course of a day or a two-day course, there's so many ideas, there's so many new thinking and new approaches that you can do yeah and yeah, like you get. Sometimes you're like, oh, it's a shame that I've kind of forgotten that or missed that, but as long as you've got like that one thing that you can try and start putting into your repertoire of tools and strategies, I think that's good.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you for making me feel better about myself. I'm glad I'm here, for that.
Speaker 3:That is true, you know there's definitely some questions that I've kept. But like that's the tricky thing with books too, right, and if I'm traveling to do coaching I can't bring like all the books with me. But you know what I can like take pictures of some pages maybe, and put it in a digital folder and refer back to, because I mean I have some stuff written and whatever, but it's just good to revisit those, those pieces that I'm like yeah, that was really good and I forgot to keep doing that or keep asking that or you know, but yeah, it's such a good point.
Speaker 3:Just one thing and you know that's usually what I ask teachers what's just one thing that you're grabbing from our coaching this year that like stuck with you, like hello, apply that to myself. You just have higher expectations for yourself, obviously yeah, so it's funny, but anything else you would tell your September self or teachers that you work with this year.
Speaker 2:I yeah, I think, a huge learning thing for me. It might sound really basic and simple, but just being flexible and adaptable.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because this year, more than any other year, I feel like things have come up that need to be dealt with or addressed or supported, that have completely hijacked for lack of a better word what I had on my agenda. You know, and so I've talked a lot about you know, imagining your top three priorities for the day or imagining what done feels like for the day, and you know the strategies definitely are something that I try and do all the time at work. But when you have a day where things come up and you cannot do what you thought you needed to do or you wanted to get done, if you on top of that busy day, if you then add on a layer of frustration because you didn't get to do what you wanted to do, it makes it the whole experience even more frustrating and, um, upsetting. So if you can have a moment of like, okay, this is more important right now. I'm just going to abandon the other things that I had on my to-do list.
Speaker 2:I think it gives you a little bit of breathing room to just say this is, this is the priority now and I think that has come up for me quite a few times of like. Just let it go, just go with what's in front of you right now, um, and I think, yeah, that's been a big, a big lesson for me this year of just be flexible with it. You can't do everything. You're only one person, there's only 24 hours in the day.
Speaker 3:Just just go with what's in front of you, that's most urgent right now, what's most pressing, um, and the rest will get done when it can get done yeah, yeah, no, that's a good point, and I often think about like okay, when things have to get shuffled, like that, I think about the things that are getting dropped and and think, is anyone and I know this is like extreme but like, is anyone going to die from this? These don't get right. And so it's kind of like when we were teaching full-time and it was. You know, the kids come to you with what seems to be an emergency, but you're like, are you bleeding? Because that's an emergency, and so kind of just tempering our own. I don't even know if it's our expectations, kind of you know to to realize that it's going to be there tomorrow, right, even things that have deadlines that feel like you know, I need a deadline to like keep myself on track, but it's also a guideline and a lot of things we can have a little wiggle room with.
Speaker 3:Some things we know we can't, and that's why we have to like make sure we build in those times to work on those bigger tasks and to ensure that we're going to in fact meet the deadline. But a lot of the things that we do in our roles are we make them up, right? It's like, okay, this has to be done by this day to ensure that it's going to be ready for this next thing, like even writing reports or, you know, getting things out to parents which you know feels pressing. But at the same time I always think, well, that's a made up deadline by someone in the school, which is an important thing to have. So if someone made it up, it can also be changed if necessary. And like you don't want to have to change things like that because you want to be consistent and you want to be reliable. But you know, when some things come up, sometimes you have to bump things a day. And is that going to change the course of the year? Probably not.
Speaker 3:So I think just some of that kind of time pressure too. If we could like go back and tell ourselves early in the year and this is a thing that you know, we've been doing this for how many years now like we have to remind ourselves that it's okay if this doesn't get done today, exactly Like you said, having to be flexible and adaptable, because that's what teaching is. Sometimes you know what the day should look like and it just doesn't look like that, for whatever reason. So it's such a good reminder, even after being in classrooms in schools for 20 something years, that we've both been in a lot of time in schools and that's a consistent experience for any teacher. Things just change Real quick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's part and parcel of working with people, right? You just don't know what state everyone is going to be in from day to day and you can't just say, excuse me, I can't deal with you being tired or not having eaten or had a family crisis, because I have an agenda that I need to get through. So, yeah, it's part of that human-centered work that we do, I think, is having to kind of go with the flow a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure, would you say that's your pare-down pointer for this episode?
Speaker 2:No, yeah, before we go to the pair down point, I was just thinking something else for September. May is I don't, because we started gathering information for our two-parter for the podcast, the Partners of Educators. We started gathering the survey data back at the start of this academic year, right, and I don't think I realised how impactful those two episodes were going to be. I can't tell you the amount of people that have reached out to me to talk about those two episodes and how fascinating it was. I've had so many people reach out. Have you had people reaching out to you as well?
Speaker 3:No, not for that episode. Yeah, I've had emails coming in from different episodes this season which I found you know, like the, the episode with Lori and and leading with love, the episode from Fred and that kind of higher level organizational work.
Speaker 3:Um, someone else emailed this week too. I'm I'm looking at our list, actually, and I can't remember what the episode was, but they had like, yeah, it's just funny that the people that have been popping up this season with certain things, but that's so interesting that people have mentioned this to you. Yeah, in particular. Yeah, people have been this to you. Yeah, in particular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people have been reaching out to say like that was fascinating to hear those results from partners, of educators, and so, yeah, I mean I would love to do it on a grander scale to get an even bigger data set, an even bigger data set, um. But yeah, it seems like I'm still talking about it, even though we've been, you know, from creating the survey and sending it out back then all the way to now. It feels like it's been. It's been a bit of a long haul journey, but it's. It's so interesting to to hear the the impact that that's had on different people very much for sure.
Speaker 3:I mean true, right, like just I'm thinking about the number of conversations from this year about you know, just processing what's happened in your day with teachers and students and you. There's a lot of mental work to unpack at the end of a day. Like we need people to like listen to us, whether it's a partner or a friend or your dog. Like you know, just like a mental unload that needs to happen and I honestly I don't know if I know any teachers that don't in some way unpack, you know, or like outwardly process a teaching day, and it doesn't have to be the whole day, but it might be something that happened from the day. I feel like it's just something, because otherwise you just it's so hard to keep everything in your mind because so much happens during the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, that's super interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so pare down pointer. I think thinking about all of that, about, you know, making it through a busy year, or learning to be more flexible, or learning from the partners of educators I think my pare down point to thinking about all of that would just be go gently with yourself you know, be kind and caring and don't be too hard on yourself.
Speaker 3:You know, be be kinder to yourself in this work that we do yeah, I think it's because we have high expectations of ourselves, right, and so we can be very hard on ourselves when we don't achieve what we want to. That's a good one. Uh, I would say what's my pare down pointer? I think, maybe to I was going to kind of go back to that flexibility, but I think, maybe, I think what would really help us is if we just remembered to think sometimes more simply, not overcomplicate what's going to be coming up, because we can really have this anticipatory anxiety about things that have not happened yet in a school year. And I think that you know, just thinking about some of the conversations I've had with teachers over this year and with myself and actually my friends that are in also in my professional network right.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we just think too far ahead because that's what in my professional network, right. Sometimes we just think too far ahead because that's what we do as teachers. Right, we are forward planners or like forward thinking and to backwards plan, but we can really get caught up in the future.
Speaker 3:And so we get over, complicate things and, you know, look for too many resources or like, well, I don't have this yet, or I don't know what to do, or like what if this happens? You know the what ifs, and so I think, if we just like bring ourselves back to the moment and just be think simply, like what do I need right now? This goes back to, like, you know, a lot of our triple P work. What's the point of what I'm doing? What is my priority right now and what's like the thing? Is there something that I actually need to help me accomplish this? If not, if it's just you and your mental capacity, great, is it just asking someone a question to help you out? Right? So, like, just thinking, keep, keep that way of thinking as much as you can as you go through the school year, because we know that there are certain times in the year where that feels so hard. Yeah, so I think that's my bit.
Speaker 2:Keep it simple.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right. That's right, that's right. This has been a nice year end wrap up, wrap up with, like you know, let's, let's talk to ourselves from the past and and kind of tie some things together and maybe just bring that with us to the next school year.
Speaker 2:Let's hope so. Take some of these lessons with us into the next year.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you so much, christine. This was a lovely conversation as it always is.
Speaker 2:Thanks, tammy. 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. Thank you.
