Ep 110 — Leaving Spaces Intentionally Blank with Christine and Tammy

Your days are packed, your walls are packed, and even your questions can come packed with follow-ups. That “always full” feeling is common in schools, but it can quietly drain focus, creativity, and teacher wellness. We dig into a minimalist concept that sounds simple and turns out to be surprisingly hard: intentional white space.

We talk through what white space actually means in education. It is not sterile classrooms or taking color away. It is deliberately leaving room on purpose: a block in your calendar that protects a reset, a professional development agenda that includes processing time, a classroom area designed with fewer distractions, or a wall that stays open so students can see themselves in the space as the year unfolds. Along the way, we tease apart helpful buffer time (like catch-up and choice blocks) versus true blankness that gives you flexibility and breathing room when the day goes sideways.

We also get practical about one of the most underrated “white spaces” in teaching: wait time. When we pause after asking a question, students get time to process, build confidence, and contribute more thoughtfully and we stop carrying the whole conversation ourselves. If you’re ready for a quick challenge, try a white space audit of your planner, your classroom, or your home and notice what’s there by habit versus by intention. Subscribe, share this with a colleague who needs more breathing room, and leave a review with one place you’re going to add white space this week.

This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Education Services. 

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome to the Minimalist Educator podcast, where the focus is on a less is more approach to education. Join your hosts, Christine Arnold and Tammy Musiowski, authors of The Minimalist Teacher and your school leadership edit, a minimalist approach to rethinking your school ecosystem, each week as they explore practical ways to simplify your work, sharpen your focus, and amplify what matters most so you can teach and lead with greater clarity, purpose, and joy.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

On this week's episode of the podcast, Tummy and I are speaking about white spaces. And not just the blank spots at the sides of a worksheet. We mean the intentional pauses, gaps, and silences to breathe in our educational spaces. We'll be exploring white spaces in education from every angle. The physical kind, yes, but also the less visible kind. So listen in to find out what we might find when we leave things a little bit more empty.

What White Space Really Means

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. How are you, Tammy?

SPEAKER_02 1:26

I'm doing well, Christine. I feel like we haven't seen each other for too long or something. So it's nice to get on the Zoom and discuss a different topic today, which I'm so excited about, actually.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah, I think it'll be an interesting one for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah. Do you want to kick us off with our topic? I I feel like it's it could be a it could be a tough one for our listeners because our our lives are filled with things all the time. And we're about the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah. So I think it yeah, it could be an interesting one for us to talk about. Two. So the to the topic for today that we're going to tackle is this idea of intentional white spaces. And when I say white spaces, it's really more a blank space, an empty space, rather than, you know, a colour or an absence of colour. So that could be literal physical blank space in a room, in a classroom, in a in a home, on a bulletin board, any sort of deliberately left empty space. But it could also be things like leaving intentionally unstructured time in a cloud in a calendar. Thank you. That's what I was trying to say. I was like, what am I trying to say? In in your calendar, deliberately unstructured time in your calendar. Uh, it could also be, you know, when we're planning for a professional development day, intentionally leaving some time free in that day and not filling every minute of it for teachers. But it could also be wait time, waiting for pauses, waiting for questions when we're teaching in the classroom as well. So that intentional use of emptiness or blankness or white space in our practice. And why on earth would we try and do that, Tammy? What would that be, what would the purpose of that be?

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Right. I mean, we just want to schedule ourselves to basically. So let's just keep loading things in or putting stuff on the walls or you know, getting pieces of furniture to fill every space. I don't know. We just love that, it seems like we like to add things. And it could be, you know, some of it I think is comfort. So we just kind of feel comforted by like seeing something on the wall, or you know, there's a blanket on a chair over there, and so it looks cozy. So there's those kinds of elements, I think. And so when there's the absence of those things, it feels bare or like something's missing. And so just even when we're just planning for this show, there there are so many white spaces that we can navigate

Calendar White Space For Energy

SPEAKER_02 4:31

better, I think. And so maybe let's start with calendars, right? Because we were talking earlier about just like the busyness. This is coming out end of school year for many people, end of May and or later May. And so it feels so busy. And so it feels like you probably can't fit in any white space into your timetable. But as you mentioned, like it's not a literal white, right? So like if you open up your Google Calendar and something is blank, that can feel odd or like something's missing again. But you can intentionally plan in something into your day that is the white space, right? So it's not like the actual placeholder in the calendar that we're talking about. It's the time that you give yourself to intentionally reset so that you can mentally become clear again, you can rest your body physically, you can just have some downtime. Those moments, you know, sometimes people wait for like the holidays or for summer or or times like that. But we have to be strategic about when we put the white spaces in all year long, because there are definitely certain points in the year where we just are just so much more tired than others. And I feel like we're kind of we're kind of in that time right now, or sort of coming out of it, especially if you experience a seasonal change with spring. We just like allergies can make us tired. We're just tired because we've been going, going, going. And so having some of that white space in your calendar is super important for you and if you have kids, and even in your classroom for your students. So we can kind of like maybe we can segue that into what your lesson plan looks like or your week plan and how you intentionally plan in some of that white space for your students too. So thinking about like the teachers that you work with, or even in your role right now, or you know, when you were teaching in the classroom full time, what did you have some white space kind of planned in there? Or maybe, you know, because we call it buffer time sometimes too.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So I was just about to say, we have talked previously about buffer time. I think I've also mentioned something that I always love to do, which was the catch up and pickles time, which is giving the time kids to catch up on work or they can pick an activity of their choice. Still going strong, still going strong with the ketchup and pickles time. But I do I do think that maybe this white space time is a little bit different to that because making time in your schedule for something like ketchup and pickles means you actually have a plan for that time.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

You know what I mean? So it actually already has a function, it already has a purpose, there's something there to do. It's a great practice to have, I think, in my opinion, yeah. To to give kids they know that they've got a little bit of time at the end of the week, that they can catch up on things that they haven't finished, or or it can be, you know, a time of of agency and choice if they've finished everything. I think that's a really nice practice for them to get into. But it does, you do have a purpose for that time. Whereas I think white space is we're the way we're talking about it today, is intentionally leaving something blank so that as you say, we have a moment to breathe, to reset, maybe transition to something else in the hope that we're not running at this chaotic speed all the time, and then crash and burn in the in the holidays, which I know a lot of people, a lot of people do. So I think probably because I wasn't intentionally thinking about this wet white space idea when I was full-time in the classroom. I think the closest that I came to it was, you know, we always we sent the kids out at, you know, three, they had to be picked up by 3.15, and meetings never started until 3.30. And so there was almost this little like moment at the end of the day

Buffer Time Versus True Blankness

SPEAKER_01 9:05

where you could like, okay, I'm just gonna sit for a minute, I'm gonna drink a cup of coffee, I might chat with a colleague. So you actually had this little sort of built-in, maybe only 15 minutes where you could there wasn't anything planned, and you could just kind of, you know, do what you needed to do or reset or just have a chat for a minute. So I think that's probably the closest that I got to having a structured white space in my calendar. I don't know about you. Did you have something?

SPEAKER_02 9:38

I would say that I mean, this is kind of almost a cop-out, but like lunch kind of like the lunch block, right? When you you're supposed to eat the lunch, but I do remember especially, well, in New York when I taught with my co-teacher there, we intentionally would leave the building a lot of days to like go get something to eat and come back with it. So that I mean, that's kind of white safe space, but it was you know sort of forced at the same time. But it gave us a chance to just like be out of the classroom and the building for, you know, 10 or 15 minutes to just let the morning go, decompress a little bit, have something visually different to look at. And it does help with the reset for sure, when you can just kind of like get out of a space and then re-enter it with a little bit more calmness or clarity, or you know, because it depends on how your morning goes and things like that. But I think I feel like that's kind of it.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah. And I mean, like I see what you're saying that it, you know, people could go, oh, that's a cop out. Of course, you have a lunch break. But I think really that's this is the reality that we're talking about for teachers. Like we don't have full autonomy over our day, out of our schedules. Even if we had a planning block and we said, Oh, I'm not gonna plan anything, we don't know what's gonna happen in that planning block, and it we may not get that time. So it is little things like I'm gonna use my lunch break intentionally to leave the building and breathe. I am gonna take the 15 minutes before my meeting just to sit and chat with someone. So I think not so much a cop-out, but just the realities of of working in a school and the pace

Classroom Walls And Visual Clutter

SPEAKER_01 11:28

that a school goes in.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty mind-blowing. Thinking too about, I'm sort of thinking about the that space now, like the white space in a physical space. Because, you know, you take your 15-minute like white space lunch or whatever, and then you come back, and then you're in this like really cluttered classroom. Like that was definitely the the situation in my New York classroom. Singapore, not so much, like it's that classroom had much less going on in it. So I felt like you know, it wasn't overly cluttered. I mean, it was still had enough stuff in it. But the white space in classroom is often like, well, okay, let me back up a little bit because I've seen different things in classrooms this year. I have seen quite a bit of white space where there's just like nothing on the wall or like there's not a lot of materials. And then I've seen the opposite end of that, right? So there's zero white space. Interestingly, the spaces that have the white space, and maybe maybe I'm naming it incorrectly because I feel like white space is means intentional. Yeah, but I don't know if this is intentional. I think it's a it's a lack of resource, and so it feels a little bit different. It's like it feels different. But when I go into spaces and I've seen classrooms and like we often share in workshops like pictures of like Nicole's old classroom, I often show that one to people at her school in Singapore, and I took a picture of another teacher's classroom this year that I worked with because I'm like, it's very intentionally designed so that there are certain spaces where it's like it's just very clear what the purpose of an area is for, and there's just not much there. Like it's just kind of the intentional, like, this is what you need in this space. You just need a pillow, and here the books are on the shelf. And so it's not empty, but it's super simple. And so there's not like a bunch of other things in those areas. And so I feel like what you can tell the difference between like that intentionally designed white space. Like, we're gonna leave this area kind of clear because this is gonna be a thinking corner, and this is where you can come to like if you need to focus on whatever you're doing, you can come over here and there's no distractions versus we don't have anything different, anything right like very different. Yeah, and it's funny because I I'm just like real that's really sinking into me right now. But the when you can have that, I don't know if autonomy is the right word, but when you have that kind of freedom to think about your space like that, where you're like, I'm not going to put too much in this space at the start of my year, let's say, because I do want my kids to feel like it's their space. And so at the beginning of a year, like we don't have to put everything up, right? Like the walls don't have to be full, it doesn't have to be fully figured out. We can intentionally leave some spaces blank because we want the kids to see themselves in the room. But that feels weird for many teachers. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yes, I've definitely come across a lot of teachers over the years who feel like, yeah, they have to have this bright, colorful, already prepped room before the kids start on day one. They feel like that's showing the kids that they're welcome and they're invited and you know, come on in, this is a friendly place to be. Which I kind of I can kind of see where that viewpoint is coming from. I've always been a bit like you and leaned on the like, let's build this together. And yeah, you might make an effort to do it quite quickly. Like if you're putting something up with the kids' faces, you're gonna want to take those photos on the first day and have it up as quickly as you can. But you know, I don't think I've never felt the urge to have it before I've even met the kids, I have to say. I think we're in another sort of similarly not lacking resources way, but we because of fire hazard rules at our school, we're not allowed to have a whole bunch of stuff on the walls or hanging off the roof, and so we have a lot of white spaces, but again, is it intentional? Not really, but right. I think we're benefiting from a little bit of a calmer environ environment because of the um the fire hazard rules. So it's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yeah, for sure. And maybe that's helpful though, right? Because then teachers don't also feel the pressure to like have a fully decorated space and you know, because things are fire hazards. And again, like you had mentioned this before, we're not saying like your walls have to be white, right? We're not saying absence of color. We're just saying that there's like an intentional blank space. It could be pink or blue or green or whatever, but there's just just nothing there to occupy the space because it's there doesn't need to be anything there, which yeah, I mean that also happens at home, right? In a lot of our homes, we just feel a little bit more comfortable when there's more things in a space because it can help with just helping us feel more at home or cozy or something like that. But I wonder if, you know,

Try A White Space Audit

SPEAKER_02 17:29

our listeners maybe we can offer you a little challenge and to like go into one of your spaces, whether it's your living room or your kitchen or classroom, office, whatever it is, and just have a look around and notice where if there's any white space in there, or even your calendar, right? Look in your planner, look at your Google Calendar, and just take note of where any of your white spaces are. And if there are none, what would it feel like maybe to like put make a white space in one of those spots? And how that like does that help you with like a little bit of stress relief or just being more mindful of things? So that's something that maybe I should do too just talking to myself, right? It's always important to like reflect and and evaluate and audit. Like we love an audit, and so like just have a look around and like what's the purpose of this? Did I think about putting that there with intention or you know, those kinds of things? Okay, so I'm gonna pose this question to you. Oh is that is there a spot in your life right now where you can do a quick little audit and for white space?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Well, there's something that I have been working on, which could be counted as white space. I have mentioned to you this to you off podcast before, but I traditionally have had an issue with my free time because I feel like I've got to be productive, I've got to get the things done, you know, whether it's you know reading my book or working on the podcast or things around the house. It feels like this endless to-do list. And so I have been trying to work on scheduling in a chunk of time on the weekends of like, I'm not planning anything, I'm not doing a to-do list, I'm just leaving it a little bit blank and just see what I feel like doing when that time comes. And I started with a whole entire day, and whew, that was a struggle, tell me. That was a struggle, but I'm finding like just like a block, like an afternoon or a few hours in the morning or something. It feels it feels great, I have to say.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point to make. Like, you don't have to go for the gold, no right, whole day of nothing. Because that could that in itself can feel overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Yeah, it made the day after super overwhelming because then I was like, I've got a whole weekend's worth of tasks to do in one day. So I yeah, that was a bit of a challenge, but um maybe I can work up to it. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Yeah, no, that's that's a good point to make, just this chunk of time. And yeah, I that's something I've been trying to do similarly, especially in this last couple of weeks, because I have a my mornings have been very heavy with the zooms and stuff like that. But then I so like I'll start at like 6 a.m. But then, you know, in being in this early time zone, I feel like I should continue to keep working until like 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. on like other tasks. And I'm like, no, that's I don't need to make myself have a 12-hour day. Like that's not that's not what I need to be doing. Like I did the important things during those, you know, first seven hours of the day to like one o'clock. And then like I should just block out a couple of hours where I'm just not thinking about things and maybe just be done for the day. Like seven hours is a is a full day of work, basically. And so yeah, I've been trying to be very mindful about that, especially at this time of the year where everything does feel like super rushed and urgent when it shouldn't feel that way. So that intentional time use later in the day. I'm just trying to like, nope, laptop is closed, it's going over there, phone is over there, just chill for a bit, TV's not on or anything. Just sit, look at the blue sky, blue water, whatever. Like just clear the mind a little bit. And then if I feel like, you know, watching something or reading something, then I'll do that or go for a walk or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

So yeah, I've really had to come back to that, especially right now with the busyness.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Getting rid of all the like shoulds. I should be doing this, I should be doing that. Just right. Have some space away from it. Yeah, exactly. Do you have a pair down pointer

Wait Time That Helps Kids Think

SPEAKER_01 22:34

for us today?

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Do you think I think I I'll go back to my point about the audit, you know, informal, quick little evalu evaluation of your calendar or your planner or your, you know, a space or something, just to see if there is any white space and just kind of think about that. Like, okay, there's no white space in my office physically. So I should I could nope, take out shit. I can think about how can I create a little bit of breathing room in the physical space for me while I work. So something like that, I think, is a good place to start. How about you? What do you think, Ken?

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Well, I think I would go back to something I mentioned very briefly at the beginning, but we didn't have a chance to expand on it. But that idea of the white space when you're having like a class discussion. Because I know a lot of a lot of teachers feel like they need to talk a lot. They're not comfortable with the wait time after they pose a question, things like that. But I think intentionally saying, I'm gonna pose my question and I'm just gonna leave space and see what happens, I think is is super helpful for yourself. So you're not working so hard. But it's also helpful for your kiddos as well to have that time to process and prepare an answer and work up the courage to put their hand up or whatever the case might be. But also just to like let those discussions flow a little bit more without you feeling like I've got to go, I've got to go, gotta get this moving, you know? So I think that would be my pear-down pointer.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

I like that. I'm glad you came back to that because that's something I'm gonna be practicing in the next couple of weeks a lot with a group of teachers. So I'm really working it on the wait time, which I haven't for a long time. But in this particular case, I really gotta dial it down and zip my stop with my layered questions and you know, leave the space open for people to respond and and think.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Tummy does love a double slash triple pronged question.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

I sure do. I do. I mean, I recognize it and I know it's happening, but but still needs to happen. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for this conversation, Christine. I think it's gonna be helpful

Sponsor And Closing Reflection

SPEAKER_02 25:12

for our listeners, and it was definitely helpful for me too, because I have some things to think about.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Me as well. All right, thank you, Tammy. This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Education Services, supporting educators with forward-thinking professional learning that puts both student impact and teacher wellness at the center. Driven by a vision to teach less, impact more, they help educators find purpose, prioritize what matters, and simplify their practice. Learn more at planzeducation.com.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Thank you for listening to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Join Christine and Tammy and guests again next time for more conversations about how to simplify and clarify the responsibilities and tasks in your role. If today's episode helped you rethink, reimagine, reduce, or realign something in your practice, share it in a comment or with a colleague. For resources and updates, visit planzeducation.com and subscribe to receive weekly emails. Until next time, keep it simple and stay intentional.