Episode 319: How Prepping on Fridays Can Change Your Life

Imagine this: It’s Friday afternoon, the classroom is finally quiet, and you’re standing at a crossroads—do you take a little extra time to prep for next week, or do you head out and deal with it later? If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In today’s episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast, we’re diving into something that might just transform your teaching life: How Prepping on Fridays Can Change Your Life.

It might sound like a small shift, but choosing to spend just 30 to 45 minutes each Friday setting yourself up for the week ahead can create a ripple effect that touches every part of your life. Less weekend stress. More clarity on Monday. A stronger connection to your goals—and yes, more time to actually enjoy your weekend.

This episode is your invitation to stop dreading Sunday nights and start reclaiming your peace. We’ll talk about the mindset, the strategy, and the practical steps to make Friday prep a habit you actually look forward to. You deserve to step into each week calm, confident, and ready. Let’s make it happen—starting today.

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Transcript

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All right, welcome back to the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. In today's episode, I am sharing why prepping for the following week on Friday might just be the most powerful shift you make in your teaching life and exactly how to make it happen without staying late or burning out. So whether you are listening on your way home from school or you are winding down after a long week, this is your reminder that a little bit of prep up front can lead to a whole lot of peace in your life. All right, let's go ahead and dive in. Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple: to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. All right, welcome back to the podcast, you guys. I am really excited about this episode. Oh my goodness, this is a thing that, like, if batch planning changed the game, like this changed the stadium that I was even playing in. I love talking about this Friday reset that's gonna change your life. Okay, so let's set the scene. It is Friday afternoon. The bell rings, your students are heading out for the weekend, and you're debating. Do I stay a little bit later and prep for next week or do I just get out of here? I'm gonna figure it out Sunday night, or maybe Monday morning. Have you ever said that to yourself? Oh, I'll figure it out Monday morning. I'm just gonna leave. I'll figure it out Sunday night, I'm just gonna leave. Let's be honest, we've all wrestled that idea, right? Today's episode is for you. If this is you, just all of us. But I'm here to tell you that if you spend just 30 to 45 minutes on Friday afternoons prepping for the following week, it can truly change your life. I know that sounds super dramatic, but that's okay. I want you to hear me out. This one small shift is going to make such a difference in your life. Your weekend stress does not exist because you literally do not think about school. It is not anywhere in your subconscious or conscious mind because you took care of all of it on Friday. When you walk into school on Monday morning, you are calm, you are collected, you are confident, you're not rushing to the copier, trying to stand in line with everybody else, and it doesn't work. And oh my gosh, I'm rushed to get to class. No, it doesn't exist. It helps you also stay aligned with your bigger goals and your standards, which we talked about last week on our planning episode on Tuesday. And best of all, you can actually enjoy your time away from work. It is so worth it. It is 100% worth it. And so I want to talk about how can we make this happen for you? First things first, let's talk about what happens when you don't prep on Friday. When you do not prep on Friday, you head into the weekend with a low grade anxiety, even though you're like, okay, oh, it's the weekend, I can enjoy, I can go relax, whatever it is that you do to do that. Like you're trying to relax, but your brain keeps reminding you that, hey, you haven't planned your Monday's lessons yet, or hey, you don't even know what you're teaching next week. Or maybe you don't think about it, but then it's Sunday night at eight o'clock, and your kids are asleep, there's dishes everywhere, laundry to fold, and you're like, oh MG, I have to go teach tomorrow and I don't know what I'm doing, and you're suddenly scrambling to get your act together. That is not fair to you. You deserve a weekend that is actually restful. Like you deserve to watch Netflix or go to brunch or sleep in on Sunday without that mental cloud hanging over you. And if you need some Netflix recommendations, oh my gosh. About the US Olympics men's basketball team. Um, Running Point with Kate Hudson is hilarious, not appropriate for other people. Like this is an adult show. Um, and then Geek Girl is so freaking cute if you have Netflix shows. I just watched those recently. Love them. Um, okay. My point is, is you deserve to watch that. You deserve to watch those shows, right? And when you prep on Friday, what you're doing is you're not just prepping on Friday, you are clearing your mind. You are making space in your life energetically in your body. You close your computer for the weekend and you know that Monday and all of next week is handled. And that feeling is absolutely priceless. Now I know that Friday can feel like the worst time to think about lesson planning. You're like, I'm tired, I'm done, I just want to go home. But here's the magic of if you did what I told you to do last week on the episode, you already know what you're teaching next week. So on Friday, all you're doing is you're prepping. It's Friday prep. And what's great is you're in the groove. You're at school, already, you're there. You just finished the week, everything's fresh in your mind. You know exactly where your students are, you know what they struggled with, you know what they're ready for next. If you wait until Sunday, though, you've got to mentally go back. You got to remember what even happened last week. And that actually takes you longer to get back into that groove. You're less connected, you're more likely to default to filler or fluff or something that isn't aligned, right? But on Friday, you're ready to get out of there. So you've got a pressure cooker moment because you don't want to be there, right? So you don't have this like kind of loosey-goosey time. You're like, I want to get home, so I'm gonna do this fast. So you have even more of a reason on Friday to do this quickly, um, which makes it even better, right? So we last week we talked about Parkinson's Law. Well, that's it on Friday. I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes to prep all of my materials next week. So, here what I'm gonna do now is talk about what does Friday prep actually look like? Like, what does that mean? So it's not about planning every detail because you already did that. You already planned if you did what I talked to you about last week. This is about giving yourself a framework so that future you can breathe over the weekend and next week. So, this is what I would do when I was still in the classroom. Every Friday I would stay late and I suggest you do the same. So, number one is I would review my pacing guide for what I was teaching next week. So, am I on track with my unit? Do I need to adjust anything for next week? Or are we all good to keep going? But this is the time when I take a look back, I reflect, I make adjustments. Then I have all of my lessons for the following week printed out. And because I have my planner, I have my lessons in my planner. This is all stuff that I teach in my um summer planning sessions that I do, and I'll give you guys information about joining for that as we get closer to June. Um, but this is where I like, I know exactly what's gonna happen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of next week. I know when assessments are gonna be, I know when deadlines are, I know when tests are, I know when checkpoints are, whatever it might be. All of that stuff I know because I've printed it out for myself. And if you're in our EB Teachers portal, you have your digital planner. And that's where you're gonna do this as you're mapping out your week. You're taking it from your larger scope and sequence and placing it into your weekly plans. Well, I'm also gonna prep my materials. So I'm gonna make my copies. I'm gonna get any digital slides ready or links ready. I'm gonna make sure that any videos that I need are found and I have those ready to go, right? All my materials for Monday through Friday of the following week are ready to go. I love doing this next part. I like to write my agenda on the board. If you're able to do this, um, I like to write down like, okay, English one, we're doing this, English or nine or whatever it is, doesn't matter. We're doing X, Y, and Z on Monday. And then I have the next class period. This is what we're doing on Monday. So I have my agenda on my board on a daily basis. And I like to prep that on Friday for Monday morning. Monday morning I walk in, I'm like, wait, what are we doing? I look at my lesson plans, I look at the board, I'm like, oh yeah, that's right. I've got all my copies made, ready to go, right? Monday you will thank Friday you for this. Promise. Um, this is optional, but it is powerful if you want to do this. And that is to reflect on what worked or what didn't work this week. And when we're able to reflect on what worked or what didn't work that week, it makes us a better teacher. It expands our capacity to grow, to learn from what we, you know, get to work on or areas that we're really strong in, things that we want to do the next time better. Um, so you might make a little note in your plan book for the next year or for the next class that this certain lesson dragged on a bit, and you might be able to actually combine it with the next lesson. You might actually be able to teach, tag, and summary on the same day or whatever it might be. So you're making those notes to yourself for the next time that you do this. That's hugely powerful, actually. Um, and I'm sorry to say this for our portal members. I know if you're listening and you're not a portal member, it makes you feel left out. And I'm sorry, but I do want to note this that if you're a portal member, you could create a whole separate category in your digital planner, in your weekly plans for this. That's like notes to self. And you could put those on your Friday um weekly plans in your digital planner on the portal so that you know. Um, sorry, my dad's calling me, so that you know exactly what to um what to do for the following year and you don't lose that information, right? Okay, um, sorry, Papa Stevie, my dad, takes care of my son and he needed to let me know that he gave Will some snacks when he picked him up from school so that he wouldn't get in trouble for feeding him a snack before dinner. If that is not the most like mom thing that I have to deal with, I don't know what is. Okay, so here's what happens when you make Friday prep a habit. Number one is you walk into Monday feeling calm, not chaotic. Two, you are more present with your family, your friends, yourself on the weekends. Three, you're not wasting time reinventing the wheel every single week. This is just what you do. Four, you can actually use your weekend to rest. Oh my gosh, what does that mean, right? And honestly, your Sunday night anxiety does not exist. Like Sunday scaries is no longer a part of your vernacular anymore. And this habit supports not just your work-life balance, but your ability to stay in this career and feel good about doing it because you are taking agency over the things that you can control. You will hear me say that over and over and over again. So I know some of you are thinking, okay, Caitlin, that sounds really nice, but I am done by Friday afternoon. And I get that. So I want to give you a few quick alternatives if you don't want to do what I just talked about, although I do highly suggest that you do. Number one, do just a mini version of what I just shared. Even if that's just sketching out your weekly overview and making your copies for Monday. Like if you can do that, that's a win. Another option, block off 30 minutes during your prep on Friday, if you have a prep on Friday, that way you don't have to wait until after school. Or you can do this on Thursday during your prep. And the last one is like turn it into a ritual, like as a alternative. Like, if it's a ritual, you have a treat, maybe you have a fancy coffee, maybe you play a playlist that you love, maybe you have a reward, like once you finish, you get to go do X, Y, and Z, whatever it might be. But what I want you to remember is that doing this is a gift to you. You are not doing any more work at all. You're just doing it smarter and you're doing it earlier. And in fact, I would argue that you are doing less work by doing it this way. So here's my challenge to you: try this just once. Just once. Just give it a shot one time. This Friday, set aside 30 to 45 minutes and get all of next week completely mapped out. Get your copies ready to go. And then I just want you to see how it feels on Friday when you walk out of school knowing that next week is already handled. And like really pay attention to that feeling. It feels good, right? The hard thing that challenges us, that changes us, that's what makes us grow. That's what helps us get better. Okay. And if you try it, I want to hear about it. So send me a direct message over on Instagram at ebacademics. You can send me an email at hello at ebacademics.com. Seriously, I would love to hear from you if you're making these small shifts and seeing how much of a big difference they can make. All right, that is it for today's episode. I hope you're walking away feeling expired, maybe excited to claim your Fridays, give your future self a break. And if you found this helpful, please share it with a teacher friend who's always stressed on Sunday nights. Like send them this episode. Let's help build healthier, more sustainable habits that support our whole lives, not just our work. Okay. And don't forget, I will have more episodes for you on planning. And in fact, I can tell you right now that next week's episode on planning is all about end of year routines to close up your classroom. So I'm going to share some of best practices, some of the things that I used to do when I would kind of close up for the summer so that you can set yourself up for next school year. All right, you guys, I will see you next week on the podcast.