Teaching Middle School ELA

Episode 384: Monday Mindset: Why “Keeping It Simple” Makes You a Stronger Teacher

• Caitlin Mitchell • Season 3 • Episode 384

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The belief that “more equals better” can quietly run your classroom and your life. We challenge that script with a fresh, practical look at simplicity—how lean lesson plans, streamlined grading, and tight routines can boost learning while giving you back time and calm. If January feels heavy, this is your nudge to stop feeding the plan book and start focusing on what truly moves the needle.

Ready to try it? Pick one simplification and commit to it this week. Then tell us how it goes—we’re cheering you on. If this resonated, subscribe, share it with a colleague who needs the reminder, and leave a quick review so more teachers can find the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, hello teachers, and welcome to your Monday Mindset Podcast episode. These are short little snippets of thoughts, reflections that I share with you on a weekly basis that are focused around mindset, things that we can do to live our best lives, to live an intentional life. And I invite you to not just listen to these for yourself and how they apply to you in your life, but consider sharing them with other people too. Consider sharing them with your students every Monday and having a conversation about it and doing a reflection together. Because I think a lot of these thoughts, these topics, these questions are just a part of being human. And sometimes being human can feel lonely. And to know that other people are struggling through some of the same challenges that you are and are benefiting from having these types of conversations is hugely powerful in allowing us to get to be the best version of ourselves. To take who we are and who we be and who we show up in the world as to that next level. So I really hope that you enjoy these Monday mindsets. And if you do, let us know over on our Instagram at Eeve Academics. Thanks so much for listening, and let's dive into our Monday mindset. Well, hello, teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Today we are back with a Monday mindset. And if you are listening to this, maybe it's your day off today, or you're listening to this on your way into school, maybe you're drinking your coffee before your day starts, which is my favorite time of the day. I want you to just take a moment to just take a breath with me. Just a deep inhale and a deep exhale. Because today's message is one that I think so many teachers just need to hear, and people just in general, to be quite frank with you, especially in January, especially this time of year. And I just want to say that keeping it simple can actually make you a better teacher. And doing less does not mean that you care about less. And that is a huge like core fundamental belief that so many of us have that we really need to shift is that a lot of us believe that if we work harder, if we put in more hours, more time, more this, more that, whatever, it means that we care. And I think one that we really need to work on moving away from. Because as teachers, we really care about the work that we do, right? You you want to impact students' lives, you want to make a difference for people. Like this isn't a job that you got into to make a ton of money, right? This isn't a job that you got into for any other reason, probably, than you either love the subject or you really love teaching, especially if you're listening to this podcast, right? If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a great teacher. You're probably an A plus teacher. You're probably not one of those teachers that we see complaining about all the time on social media, right? And so you probably have this belief that if it's simple or it's easy, it's probably not good enough. Or if I'm not doing more, if I'm not doing this thing or I'm not doing this or whatever, then I'm not being effective as a teacher. And this belief shows up everywhere, everywhere, all the time. Like, think about how often that shows up in your life. And I want to mention at Batch Planning Live, if you're an EB teacher or you don't know anything about this, but we host a two-day live virtual event twice a year called Batch Planning Live, where we plan our lessons together with our teachers. And so often it comes up that our teachers are like, Oh, my plans look kind of empty. And I'm like, Yeah, but you have everything planned. Like you don't, you don't need to add more to it just because you feel like you need more or like it looks like there's not enough, right? So many of our teachers think, oh, I just I gotta include this one. And it's like, no, you don't. You absolutely do not. Like, just let it be simple. Right. Even in our grading systems, so many of us feel like we've got to do all of this stuff, we've got to leave all of this feedback. And it's like, no, let's use a rubric, let's keep it simple for ourselves, let's circle or highlight or underline the things that our students need to work on, as opposed to writing scores of comments on our students' essays that are never gonna get read, that are never gonna land for our students, that actually aren't gonna make the difference for them. That takes us 15 to 20 minutes of our time per essay. That's insane. And so it's like we have this immense pressure on our shoulders from somewhere, from a lot of us, it's from within ourselves. For others, it's from the systems that are surrounding us and the places that we work. But there's this immense pressure to equate more with quality. And that's not 100% true all the time. So that means it's not true. And that means it doesn't need to necessarily be true for you. And so, what I want to invite you to change your perspective around today is that simple does not mean lazy. Simple does not mean watered down. Simple instead could mean that you are being intentional. And I know that that's so much easier said than done, right? It's like it's simple but not easy, right? So many of these concepts that I've worked to integrate into my life as I've gone through just massive changes and healing in my own life and working on myself and trying to be the highest version of myself. It's like so many of these concepts that I'm learning intellectually, I'm like, yes, I get it. But in my soul, in my being, in my emotional world, it's like very difficult to integrate. So this whole concept is it's it's simple, but it's not easy because we are really conditioned throughout our entire lives to believe the opposite is true. But I I really feel like simplicity is how we live peaceful and easier lives. And I just want to mention, I talk about Diana, I feel like a lot, the decluttered mom on Instagram. She's one of my friends. And she talks a lot about like the less stuff that we have, like literally the less physical things that we have in our lives, the easier our lives are. And it's true, if you've ever decluttered a part of your house, you know that you know this experience, right? It makes everything so much simpler. Life is streamlined, life is easy. You don't have a million things to clean up. Everything has a home. You don't just have crap all around you, right? And the same thing goes in for our classrooms, not just in terms of like physical clutter, but like the mental clutter of our classrooms or of our lives. So stop equating like a full plan book with being a great teacher. That's simply not the case. Like I look at my lesson plans toward the end of my career, and literally they were so basic, they were almost just reminders to myself of what I needed to do. Like if you came in and looked at my plans, you would have no idea what was going on in my class. But because I knew what I was doing and it was just like, okay, EBW intro, that's all I needed to write down. And the thing I want to point out is like this is a very human thing to want to do. Like we tend to overcomplicate things. Like we're just wired to do that. And I think a lot of the times we overcomplicate because we care. We overcomplicate because we don't want to miss something. We have this fear that often disguises itself as productivity. Like if I'm just productive enough, if I'm just doing more, if I just overcomplicate things, I can feel good about myself. I can feel like I'm worthy of whatever. Right? It's just really interesting. Like, how often does it come up for you that you feel the need to be productive or like show more of something because otherwise you feel like you're not doing enough? How often does that come up for you? Like maybe you feel like you're not meeting expectations, or you're not being rigorous enough, or people aren't seeing you as a good teacher. And what happens when you have those feelings? You do more, you add more, more steps, more activities, more checks, more plans, whatever. Like, think about that. How often does that come up for you that you feel that way? That like I've gotta be more productive a lot. I mean, it happens for me. And I think right now is the perfect time to have this conversation because at least for me, this time of year is really hard. Like, I really struggle through the seasons, especially winter. It's cold, it's dark, like energy is just kind of lower across the board. And I don't necessarily, for me at least, see this time of the year as a season for like overhaul or rejuvenation or new things. Like that for me comes in the spring and the summer. And especially this time of year in school, it's just hard. And so instead of like doing the most or reinventing the wheel or all these things, right? What if instead this time of the year you just asked yourself the question of what would it look like to do less, but do it better?

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm gonna do less stuff, but I'm gonna do it really, really well. And I don't want to stay like abstract with that. I want to give you something that's actionable. So I want you to pick one area of your life. Doesn't have to be teaching, or it can be teaching, it can be like one subject or like one part of the subject of ELI. One area of your life that you can simplify today. And for me, right now, I simplified food in my life. As a single mom, like I struggle big time with the mental load that comes with like trying to decide what to cook every night, especially because my son doesn't eat anything. He eats hamburgers, grilled cheese, and salmon. It's the strangest array of things, but like no pasta, no pizza, like it's a nightmare to cook for him. And so, really, like I'm just cooking for myself, which I hate doing anyways. And so it's like one of my bigger struggles right now is to figure out like every single night what the heck am I gonna cook? And so what I've decided to make my life easier, to take off like the mental load of just thinking about things and making decisions, is I've decided I eat a salad every night. I have other things too that I eat, but like I eat a salad every night and I have four ingredients to choose from. That's it. And so I just always need to make sure that I have those four things on hand, and then that's it. I don't have to think about it. I just eat the salad. And then on the nights that I do have my son, I'll add like white rice and chicken apple sausage. And that way, like I don't have to think about it anymore. I've simplified one area of my life that was stressing me out, leaving me grumpy because I would get hangry, trying to figure out what to make for myself at the last minute. And it just took that mental bandwidth out. And so for you as a teacher, like this can look like something in your classroom or even something in your personal life. And my biggest piece of advice, if you want to just take my advice and you don't even want to think about it, you just want to do what I say, is simplifying your classroom routines and systems. Pick one thing to do with that. And I actually talked all about that in episode 378. It's five classroom routines that make the entire semester easier. If you haven't listened to that, go listen to that episode. It's episode 378 and do the one thing that I talk about at the beginning of that episode, and it will make your life so much more simple, so much simpler, so much easier. You'll be so happy. So make a commitment today to doing the simple thing. Easier said than done. Right? It's simple, not easy, but let's work really hard to let it be easy. Alright, you guys, here's to another great week of living intentionally.