Yay, teachers, administrators, everybody involved in schools and campuses, you have almost made it. Summer is almost here and unless this is your first year teaching, you know this to be true. Is there anything as exhausting, as stressful, and yet as exhilarating and potentially as fun as the last week of school?
Well, I gotcha. I have this brief episode this week and in it I'm giving you the best tips and tricks that I learned in over 20 years of packing up that classroom and getting the heck out of there on how to, one, be organized, two, what to do about curriculum, and three, how to have some fun. If you're a new teacher, oh my gosh, you are gonna need to know this.
I made so many mistakes those first few years, and if you're an adult. Experienced teacher, I bet you there'll be some gems in here you haven't thought of too. So let's get right to it. I will see you on the inside. Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance.
If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, You have found your home in the podcast universe. I'm your host Grace Stevens and let's get going with today's show. Right,
three areas we're going to talk about. The first one, because y'all, you're a teacher and you still need to keep teaching, right? No matter how crazy it is. The first area we're going to talk about is curriculum. Because you know, whether you're, you know, in the grades where they test, you'll know what happens.
After the testing. All the motivation with students seems to have gone, and with teachers too, a little bit, because you know, you may have really been cramming to get all that key curriculum in before the test. So now what do you do? And even if you haven't been testing the last few weeks of school, everybody's routines are 100 percent disrupted.
Okay, it is just craziness between open house and assemblies and field days, and a lot of field trips get cancelled. You know, packed in the last few weeks of school and just all the things, right? And we know that nothing. is an invitation for student dysregulation and mayhem more than unstructured time.
So we still need to find something for them to do. And what you might not know, if this is your first year teaching, is the things that you rely on, like one to one devices, and in a lot of cases, even curriculum and books But they don't make it till the end of the year. They need to be collected. They need to be inventoried, right?
And so the last week of school, it's not unusual to find yourself with no devices for the kids and no books. So what are you going to do? All right. So I have some ideas. Hold on here. First off, as an aside, let me just say, if you are in the lower grades and you're not involved in state testing, and even if you do do so.
State Testing. Sometimes there are all kinds of other assessments you need to do at the end of the year, right? Map tests, this, that. There's just assessments. My first year teaching, oh my gosh, I thought how perfect it would be to do those assessments the last two weeks of school as fillers, right? Because we have these short gaps.
And you know, maybe field day was in the morning. What are we going to do in the afternoon? Oh Lord, do not give an assessment, right? That is not setting kids up to be successful. I just, I can't even believe I did that. So there's that. But the key is to find a way. activities and I try and focus on ones that are shorter in length and that involve an element of choice.
Okay, some examples might be you know, this, if you have older kids, a perfect place to engage. Introduce maybe some project based learning. Now you don't have time to do a whole, you know, they get to choose the project and go through all the metrics and the rubrics, but have something like in third grade, we did this project.
I'm not even sure we've got it. Maybe somebody bought it off TPT or whatever, but it was taco trucks. I know that sounds funny, but it was super fun. The kids got to design their own taco trucks and it was, you know, cross collect. Okay, so you needed to first off you know, English language arts. We had to, you know, come up with some advertising.
There was some art involved in that, some slogans. Then you had to do math. You had to come up with your menu items. You had a book. Budget, depending on your age group. And then I also provided graph paper that had Xeroxed onto a harder cardstock. So kids could actually make three dimensional shapes of this taco truck.
So that kids were doing at their own pace, but obviously there was some structure there. If you want some ideas going back to the wonderful episode that I did on project based learning. Let me see. That was episode 34. And Ryan there had so many fantastic free resources on his site. Go back and listen.
But like I said, even if you don't have time for a whole big project, there's a ton of ideas. I'm sure that he had some of them plug and play. Another thing that I love to do for language arts. I don't know if you know John Spencer. He does amazing things, but if you go on YouTube, he has these fantastic writing prompts, they're video writing prompts.
And so if your students don't have their devices anymore, guess what? Usually what you'll want to look at when you're doing a transcript is a piece of paper and a pencil. Old school, my friends. Play the video of the writing prompt and they're super engaging. Like you're, you know, your pet finds a cell phone, you know, what apps would they put on it, like really fun stuff.
Okay, so these are plug and play. Just, you know, have a repertoire of these. So again, his name is John Spencer with a C and you can find him on YouTube. If you don't know him, oh my gosh, follow him. He's amazing in all kinds of areas. But anyway, so those are just two kind of ideas. You want shorter things.
Some things I've done in the past I've helped the kids create memory books Not a lot of my kids could afford yearbooks. Yearbooks have got so expensive. And I hate for kids to feel less than, right? When all their friends are out on the yard getting their yearbook signed and whatever. We would make a simple memory book and put a signature page on there.
So kids felt like they could participate and just come up with some prompts. You know, your, your favorite thing that you did this year, the favorite thing that you learned. Like things that keep students engaged. In my TPT store, I mean, I think it's a dollar. Okay, maybe it's 1. 25. I don't even, I can't remember, but I have a teacher roast activity.
There is a Google Slides version, but there's also pencil and paper. It was the most fun I had. I wanted a memory myself of my kids. My last class in this teacher roast was, it just had prompts, you know, draw a picture of your teacher. What's something your teacher always says? What's something your teacher does that's cringe?
What do you think the last thing was that your teacher Googled? I mean, it had us. Fracking up I still have them all in a stack on my desk. I look at them, you know, so fun fact more than three kids said this. Something I always say, if you know me in life, you know, I say a lot. I lost the plot. I lose the plot a lot.
Like I, I, I get easily distracted. I'll be in the middle of teaching and then I'll stop and I'll be like, I lost the plot. And the kid will have to fill me in. You know, I play pickleball. Pickleball. You have to announce your score before you serve. Every single time I look at my partner and they'll even sometimes say to me, you lost the plot.
And I'm like, yeah, I lost the plot. So it's the stuff like that. Super fun. Okay. So just find some shorter. Engaged, activities and in the third section, I'm going to talk about fun. You know, this, this comes into fun, but, but I'll come to, well, let's do it now. Okay. So here are some fun things. Okay.
Especially if the devices have gone. How can you have some fun the last few weeks of school? Okay. Again, let's think low tech. I always love to have a day where kids could bring in board games from home and card games. They always love that. We could have a reading day. Bring a blanket. Where you're comfies, we made reading forts, like we would put the desk together and we would read, and then guest readers, and just, you know.
A lot of fun around that. Okay. Things that you hadn't had a chance to get to all year that were hands on. I always had a science junk box. I would go through what have we not done this year. Hey, you go make this solar powered house. It was a kit. You go do this. Like we just, with dominoes, who can make the longest domino train?
Like really? Old school stuff, younger kids. Oh my gosh. If I got out those dollar store jigsaw puzzles you know, something age appropriate that they can finish in maybe half an hour, don't get out, you know, a thousand piece you know, galaxy one, but have kids do jigsaw puzzles, they love that. And they rotate.
The most fun I ever had was I set kids up in groups and then I made puzzles. I went to the, I went to the gym and I went and got big hula hoops and I put all the pieces for each puzzle in a hula hoop and spread them all around the room so nobody was mixing up pieces right and then like every 10 minutes, bing, hit the timer and the group of kids would need to go to the next puzzle.
That way they stayed engaged, they had fun. Fun. You know, some kids like some puzzles more than others. Like, it was just, you know, does it take more work? Yes, but it's fun and they're engaged. And in the long run, we all know if students are engaged, it's not, you know, 100 percent guarantee that it will control behavior, but you'll be less likely to have issues.
Something else I want to say is one of the things I always thought would be so fun for kids is let's all watch a movie together. You know, 20 years ago, that was a really big treat. That, you know, I had a projector and a big screen in my room and kids found that magical to lay down and watch, you know, movie on a huge screen.
You know, it was like going to the movies. But kids have devices. They, they can watch whatever they want, whenever they want now. So they're less engaged by movies and it's very stressful if they're like, I had always I used to read my students Hugo. The invention of Hugo Cabret, you know, awesome book kids loved it, used to, you know, put it under the dot cam so they could see all those illustrations.
I would do some whole big, I don't want to get off on a tangent, but anyway, one day maybe I'll talk about my favorite literature books to teach, but I would always make a whole big unit out of it. Yeah. And, but anyway, so it was a big deal that was like, Oh, well, we watch Hugo at the end of the year. You know what half those kids went home and watched it on Netflix before we even got to it, right?
You know that. So what are you going to do with those kids? It was more stressful to try and keep people, you know, students quiet while the other ones who really wanted to watch it. With me, but we wanna watch it with you, Mrs. S. We wanna lay on the beanbags with you and watch it right Then. What are you gonna do when the other class, half the class isn't engaged?
I always had something else for them to do that they could do quietly. Like I said, work on your taco trucks. You know, if they still had a device go, you know, if you brought you Uno from home, you could do that. There was, as long as you did it quietly. I would never force a kid to watch a movie. I would always have other options for them as long as they could be self managed and do it quietly.
Otherwise it's just a stress fest. You know, that movie will never seem so long. Right. So even though you think that's going to be a fun rewards, unfortunately, these days, it kind of takes more than that. Okay. So those are just some ideas of activities to keep it fun. Again, keep it short. Here's something else you can do.
How about depending on the grade. Have students write a letter for incoming students so that every student when they come to your class next year has on their desk a letter from a student who sat in this, that desk. Hey, this was my desk. Here's all the great things I learned here. Here's what you need to know about my teacher.
Right? Just kind of, it's, it's fun and reflective. Give some structured prompts if that's appropriate. You might want to wander around the room and proof what kids are reading. Make sure it's appropriate. You know how some of these little rascals try and pull one over you. Right, so just, but that's a fun activity for the kids who are writing the letters and for the kids who receive them.
Okay, so just another idea. All right, so those just a few ideas to keep you going on having fun, having kids engaged, how about This whole thing, that's about the students. What about you? It, here's my, was my first year teaching, how naive was I? First off, that, you know, I was still giving assessments. I mean, they were only second graders.
It's not like their college future was depending on it. But still, okay, that was a lesson learned. The other thing, last day of school, oh my gosh. Firstly, was not prepared. I was gonna send home everything on the last day of school. What, didn't fit in their backpacks? Mayhem. I was dressed in such a cute dress.
I got to tell you, it was, I spent such a long time getting ready for the last day of school. I was so excited to hug those kids goodbye. And I knew some parents would want to take pictures of them with their parent, with their teacher and all that stuff. Oh my gosh. And I was wondering why is everybody else dressed so casually?
You know why they're dressed so casually? Cause they knew they had to pack up their room. And on top of all of that, I had no idea, right? That the last few weeks of school, the actual. Busyness, as far as paperwork requirements, okay? If your upper grades, you know, it's all about the Honor Roll, getting your grades in, report cards for every grade, everybody has to do that.
Had no idea what a cum was, a cumulative folder. Right? Everybody knows what that is unless you're brand new. Okay, so you've got to fill out all the details in the coombs. You had to have kept a school photo for that. Hopefully somebody told you that. I was scrambling at the last minute. I'd used all those cute photos.
On send home gifts. I didn't know so so, you know, you need the photo, you need to put in, gosh, back in the day, we used to have to put in their height and weight. I don't think you're allowed to do that anymore. I think the nurse has to do that now. And then their grades and, you know, all the stuff that takes forever.
You've got to do the pinks and blues. We got to find another name for these things, but those are those, chart, the little forms that you fill out, most schools have them for placement for students next year. Special needs that they have. Do they go to resource? You know, all the things to try and make balanced classes.
You might also have to meet with your grade span to figure out next year's classes as far as which students are going to go where. And as a quick aside, you will be really frustrated to know that when you naively look at your class lists for next year or the following year, Oh, how did those kids end up together?
We separated them, right? It's really kind of like a running joke that we spend all this time doing this. And then it seems like somebody throws those cards in the air and just puts kids wherever. But anyway, all that stuff takes time. Okay. So let me give you at least a few tips on organization. Packing up the room, getting all the things done, okay?
And if you want to dress up fancy for the last day of school, I didn't regret it. I just, you know, found out afterwards, okay, I'm going to need to come back for three days and get everything done that I didn't realize I needed to do. So the first thing is enlist the students, okay? Enlist the students. To make it, that can be fun, okay?
So as far as getting stuff off the walls, if you haven't had Open House yet, here's my ninja tip. When the parents are there. Hand them a stapler remover, honest to goodness. Hey, you've seen your kid's stuff, do you want to take it home with you right now so it doesn't get wrinkled in a backpack? I would have a portfolio, I would just get two large pieces of paper, staple them, the kids would put all their work that we'd saved all year that wasn't on the walls in a big folder on their desk and at back to school night, send it home with the parents.
Okay, above and beyond that, the parents don't come, then, I always used to go to the grocery store and ask them can I have 10 paper bags please for my kids to take home their stuff, or 20 paper bags, they always used to give them to me for free. Now I know they charge for bags, but back in the day they didn't, but if you explain to them you are a teacher they'll probably let you have them, right?
Stuff doesn't fit in kids backpacks. So. Enlist the kids help with all of that. Enlist the kids help. So once the walls are clear, you know we gotta clear out the desks and clean the desks and all those things. Make it fun. Put on a timer. 10 second tidy. We'd say let's have a 10 minute tidy. Let's see how much we can clean up in 10 minutes, right?
Little kids especially. Oh my god. Get them going with a wet wipe. And tell them you got five minutes to clean your desk, to clean inside your desk, to clean your chairs, to clean under your desks. And at the end, I'm going to look at the wet wipes. The five kids with the dirtiest wet wipes get a prize.
Whatever. Okay. Just enlist them, try and make it fun. Don't be stacking the desks. We always used to have to stack our desks in the corner, put the chairs on them before we checked out so that they could do the deep cleaning of the carpet. Right, okay? You know how many times I hurt my back moving those desks?
Now if you have younger kids, they can't do it. Guess what? I taught in a K 8 because I taught lower grades. All the kids in the upper grades, I knew because I'd had them. Go get yourself a box of Otter Pops or some cheap ice cream and just let it known. Like that everybody knew. Kids started to know on the last day of school, they would start congregating around my door before it was even time and they're like, can we come stack?
Can we come stack? And they are easily bribed and will do it all for you. Just because it's fun. Just because they want the ice cream. Just because they want to hang out with you. Button list. The kids, they can stack books, they can count books, like you can't have all kids helping at all times, maybe.
So have some different activities that kids are doing and then pull five or six kids at a time to help you. Kids love to help. I don't care what their age is. They love to help. Don't buy into the fact that middle schoolers don't like to help. And there are beyond that. There will always be some who want to help.
Okay. All right. What else for organization? Let me think. Oh, here's the thing. I remember that The last day of school, you know, and these kids come in with, you know, little gifts and little tokens for you. And I always wanted to send the thank you notes home with them, right? Because I didn't want to do it over summer and I didn't want to have to go look for an address.
You know what, make technology your friend, okay? I had ClassDojo on my phone. Probably you have some kind of parent communication app. You know what I would do? The last few years I taught, the kid brought me something. I'd open it right there and there. Hey, stand with it. Take a photo of it. That way I don't forget who gave me what, otherwise I was always making big old lists and then trying to write the thank you notes while they were watching a movie.
You know, wow. Managing behavior, all the things that was very stressful. Just snap a quick photo of them holding it. Then you know who gave you what. And guess what? When they're watching their movie or doing whatever or even you don't have to feel pressured to do it before the last school day is out. You can just go later on in front of the telly and the television.
That's what a telly is, television. You can just send a quick class dojo. Like find the photo. Send it to the parent. Hey, I really appreciated this. Thanks so much. Have a great summer. Right? Copy and paste. That's it. You're done. Okay. Make it easy for yourself. All right. Those are just a few of the things I said I was going to keep it short because it's the end of the year and you're super, super busy.
So go ahead, try and have fun, try and enjoy, try and be present. I know that's the hardest thing, right? You want to be present. You want to enjoy. It is kind of craziness. If this was your first year teaching, oh my God, you made it. I'm so proud of you. I remember just being so relieved at the end of my first year that I was like, you know, I did it.
I did it. Everybody survived. Many kids thrived. And I did it and I, and I learned a lot that, you know, every year I learned something. Every year I refined my practice. What teaching looks like now is nowhere near what it looked like, you know, 22 years ago when I started. So every year you adapt. But know that You have a teacher's heart.
If you're listening to this podcast, I already know that about you. You want to do well, you want to do better for your kids and for yourself. So I am proud of you. I hope you rock the last few weeks of school. I'm so sorry if your school gets out later. Some of you don't get out until June, but a lot of people, especially where I teach in California, are out in, you know, a couple of weeks.
So I wanted to get this episode out here. And as always, no matter how many days left you have of school, create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and I will talk to you soon.
