Naomi Meredith  00:00

Stepping into a K through five STEM role is equal parts exciting and overwhelming. If you were a classroom teacher before, like I was, you were definitely thrown into a whole bunch of new teacher responsibilities. Without systems and  boundaries set in place, you can quickly drown in all of the things that you have to do, and you might not get anything done. In this episode, I will be sharing with you three STEM teacher boundaries that you need to start now, so you can be productive and not overwhelmed. 

Naomi Meredith  01:08

Before we jump in, I have a couple quick announcements for you. So the doors are open for my K-2 virtual STEM planning workshop where you can join me and other teachers live to create a unit plan for one of your primary student grades while also building up, like we're talking about in this episode, systems and routines to help you with your K-2 STEM planning. It can be very overwhelming planning for the younger students. But within this two-hour timeframe, you are going to be productive and be filled with so many ideas that you might have more than what the school year even has for you. So definitely check in the shownotes for the link. As I said, you can join live, and it will be recorded. So if you can't be there live, still join in that recording, which will be sent to you and you can work on it in your own time. So definitely worth a two-hour investment where you can set this up for you to be productive for the whole rest of the school year. Likewise, I have an upcoming STEM virtual book club that I would love for you to join. I know it can be a lot reading books as a teacher throughout the school year. But there's lots of ways that you can implement it throughout your day. I will even have pacing guides for the book that we will read that month. I'm not picking anything super huge anyway. But as a STEM teacher, you always need to continue to learn and promote a growth mindset in your own life and for your students. So what better way to do that with this book club. So the doors aren't open yet on that one. But make sure to check out the waitlist so you will be notified as soon as it's open. And we can start reading together or just join for the community part because we know in clubs you don't always read the book anyway. But it's good to have those discussions. So definitely want you to be a part of that this year. 

Naomi Meredith  03:02

I've talked a little bit here and there on this podcast about my role as a K through five STEM teacher. But as my first year in this role, it was a new position and district, so I had a lot of hats that I had to wear. On Mondays I would teach GT science. Yep, gifted and talented science to students who are identified in science. And then Mondays and Tuesdays the times I wasn't meeting with my group of students, then I would co-plan and co-teach with teachers in my building to help them implement STEM innovation into their regular instruction. Wednesday through Friday, I was part of the STEM specials rotation where I would see students K through five, my same six classes for those three days in a row. And then it would start all over again. On top of that I was, and I still am, the point of contact and technology person in the building. So there's no other person in her building, who's the tech person for troubleshooting. That's all me. And yes, all of these things I don't get paid extra for. So with the funding and who we have in our building, how I split the week with the specials rotation, I now teach K through five STEM and I am still the tech person. So with all of these different things, and I know as a teacher you have a whole lot of things going on too, so setting boundaries is super, super, super important no matter what your role is, because you really need to protect your time. I've said this before, teaching K through five STEM is like throwing a birthday party six times. It is a very high energy position, and you need to make every moment special and exciting for all the classes because STEM is important and you love it. I know you do, you're in this position. But you definitely need to have these boundaries in place so you can actually plan during your plan time. I hardly take work home and that is because I have a lot of boundaries and I use my plan time to plan. Now, if there's something I need to research and learn more about, sure, I'll do it over the weekend. But that's pretty rare. I'm not doing that very often. So when it comes to actual planning and work, I don't do it outside of school, I do things like this for you. And I gave you a thumbs up. This might sound really strict with the things I'm going to be sharing about. But just a little bit of insight about me, I grew up as being a yes person. I didn't have any boundaries. I just always said yes to things and then it just made me very anxious. I just thought, that's what nice people do. That's what a nice girl does. Well, I have been really growing in this area as a person. I'm being vulnerable on here. But setting boundaries is a good thing. It's taken me a long time to realize that, and not just in your job, but in life in general boundaries are okay. It's okay to say no, I'm not perfect at this. But I'm definitely going to be sharing these strategies that have really helped me, as a STEM teacher. Even as a teacher in the classroom, this is very helpful as well, where my boundaries in the workspace as a STEM teacher helped me to be successful, but also the people around me, it helps them be successful as well. I can't be in 10 million places at once, even though I tried to be in a lot of different ways. But setting these things up can really maximize your time and your space overall, and even just make this STEM teaching more enjoyable, which is the thing that we love the most. So here are the three boundaries that I use that I think you can do as well. 

Naomi Meredith  06:46

The first boundary to set in place is starting and ending your class on time. This one's hard and easy. There's a lot of tricks that I have for this one. But my reasoning for this is that you need to build respect for yourself. If you're not starting or ending on time, how can you expect the classroom teachers to bring their students to start and end on time? I of course make mistakes. There's times that I'm like, oh, no, I didn't realize it was a different schedule today. But overall, I'm pretty good at starting and ending on time. And yes, it does take time being in your space to understand the flow of the classroom and how you're going to set that up, which we talked about a lot in past episodes, specifically check out episode eight and 12, where I talked about management, behavior management and classroom management. Even thinking about the structure of your lessons that's going to help you with the time management in general, if your classroom feels like a hurricane every single day. Since there's no system, it will be hard to start and end on time. So really get that in place. Here are a few tricks that I do that for the students. I like them to visually see how much time they have to actually work. Just setting up a timer on the screen is extremely helpful. This will help them in the long run to to set up their own boundaries. So see how we're helping each other. I like to use classroom screen.com, my absolute favorite free online tool. You can buy the paid version, and I think it'll save all your screens. I don't 100% know, but I absolutely love it. And a fun new background pops up every day. For myself, even in conjunction with that classroom screen, I will set timers on my watch all day. I am always talking to my watch, like a spy kid, where I'm like, Hey, I'm not going to say it out loud, because my watch actually might do it, I'm wearing it. But I will tell my watch to set a certain number timers and it does on my hand. So that's really helpful for my class time. Also, for my transition time, I have five to 10 minutes and between classes, which I know is very lucky not everybody gets. But even for that transition time. As soon as the class leaves, I set a timer on my watch, which is going to help me with starting the next class on time. Likewise, I have set up in my Google Calendar. That is my preference. I think you can do this in Outlook, if that's the calendar you use. But I have set up a recurring event for my whole STEM schedule of when my plan time is when I see each class when my lunchtime is. So I have that set up in my calendar as a recurring event. So when you look at my calendar, it always looks like I have a lot going on. But I have it all set up connected to my watch where I have all the times pop up on my watch and I know my schedule for the day. I will even go in if we have a delayed start and change the time so the correct times will pop up so I'm not referring to an email and all of that. So this sounds very type A I have been type A in the past or qualities of either type A but I'm actually more of a B-plus kind of person. But there are some things that really help with that time management when it comes to the end. have class when students are all cleaned up and ready to go, I'm very thankful for this setup where my classroom is, but I actually have students line up in my hallway, this may or may not be an option for you. But the students are in the hallway and they are ready to go for their teacher. The classroom teachers don't like it when they're in the hallway very long, because they get start getting loud and noisy. I'm not I'm not going to manage that. So the classroom teachers will actually almost always show up on time, because they know I'm going to end on time and their kids are going to be in the hallway ready for them. So this has actually helped teachers finish up their playing time. I know playing time is precious, I was a classroom teacher to my time is equally as precious as well. Those in between times, I will have to use the restroom, get water be an actual human, set up something really quick for a transition, I might even need to talk to a student privately, or a teacher might have a question for me privately. So that little bit of time and not just sitting there with my feet up on the table will not be nice. But that's really important. I've worked at schools where specialist teachers who don't end on time, the classroom teachers will end up showing up late and it just creates this whole cycle. So build that trustworthiness, really starting to end on time. It's such a good boundary, it can be really hard, you will mess up, I still mess that. But overall, it's just a really good thing to set in place. 

Naomi Meredith  11:24

The next STEM teacher boundary is to own your email. I'm awesome. At my work email, I'm trying to get away better with my work email. I'm just figuring out how the common themes and everything. But with work email, I'm so good at it. This has always been a good hack for me. And I know email can be overwhelming, but own it, you can definitely own it and make it work for you. I really try to have at least 15 or less emails in my inbox. That means I'm constantly reading my emails when they pop up on my phone. I am hardly ever sitting down and answering emails during my plan time or when I get to school. I feel like that is a big waste of time. And a lot of the emails are things that are quick and that can be answered or just need like a one or two sentence reply. So I am reading my email all day. I know as a classroom teacher, that can be hard when you have parents who are emailing you. So that is definitely up to you. Maybe your school policy, you're not allowed to check your phone. But I am looking at my email all day I have a popup on my watch. I can't respond on my watch at this time. But I'm always reading it. And I'm always deleting emails, replying back and sorting them in folders. So I have a ton of different folders set up where I am organizing things constantly, so I can refer back to them when I need them. It is such a big pet peeve of mine when people don't read their emails, even if I don't answer right away. I read it. I read things right away. That also includes my work email, I'm reading it right away. Sometimes I need to think about the answer or do some research about it. But I read it all the way. And so that can be really frustrating to when I email and people ask me the same question. So oftentimes, I will reformat things that I have said before, in just a nice way. It's like kind of like will read your email. So be an adult on your email, read it. But definitely checking it throughout the day helps a time, it will give you back a lot of your plan time. Likewise, with that, I told you that I am the tech person. And so I will have teachers email me if they have a specific technology issue, I actually can answer them a lot quicker. And then if they come into my room and interrupt me when I'm teaching, I'm teaching just like they're teaching, I don't want to go and interrupt them. So an email can be way quicker, I can oftentimes take a screenshot of the solution. 

Naomi Meredith  13:44

Before reading an email I sent to another teacher who had a similar issue, I can type it out pretty fast. And so it's not as disturbing. Trust me, I'm not on my phone all day, I don't get that many emails. So don't picture I'm in my classroom. I'm on my phone constantly. But I'm just saying just answer them as they come. And it will help you with that technology management. I also like to send calendar invites, I have Outlook for my work email, but you can do this any Google calendar as well. But I like to send invites, if I am meeting with teachers one on one, because that way it will pop up in their calendar as well. I don't have to send a reminder email, it will do that for them. And also for me, I have it in my calendar as well. So then it can definitely keep me organized. So that's a nice hack as well. Finally, when it comes to emails that you are sending all the time, you're like, Ah, I send this all the time. I'm always saying the same thing like bring your devices to STEM in my classroom actually don't have a computer lab, the students actually bring their classroom devices and bring them to STEM. I've done that for the whole five years. I've been in this position and it's good for student responsibility of their devices. But if I know they're going to bring their devices for a unit I will actually set add up my emails to pre send for that unit the day before at 3pm. So if a teacher does happen to see it on a weekend, I don't expect them to, but it'll be in their inbox in the morning when they come into work. So they know students need to bring their devices. So it's nice to have these all set up and pre scheduled. So I'm not scrambling, oh, no, they need their computers or the classroom teacher is not scrambling. So that's really helpful as well. I will also do this for my after school clubs, I have a whole bunch of clubs that are going on and multiple groups. So I will sit down, yes, this takes some time. But then I don't have to go and think about it later. I will schedule reminder emails of when they are meeting that day, what time they need to be picked up. And so that is all set up for my whole rest of school year, I have my email scheduled all the way till the end of the school year. So that way, that's not an email, I have to think about, like I said, and it is all ready to go. Finally, with the email also set up notification timers. This is something that I have played around with on my phone, but I have my email setup on my phone where it will turn on notifications during the workday. And it will also turn off when the workday is over. It won't turn on during weekends, I will also manually turn it off when I have a day off of work, or if it's a holiday, because you'd want me to answering email outside of school. Yes, I'll answer during the day. But there's usually nothing that important that I need to be looking at and reading when I'm not at school. And if I'm staying on top of it, there's not much that's happening outside of school anyway. So that's just really protecting my time, you could even delete the app during holiday breaks if you want to. But that is your time. And I think that's super important. So play around with your notification settings, that can be really helpful. 

Naomi Meredith  16:50

The final boundary I have is for technology management. So if you are like me, you are the tech person or you collaborate with a tech person in your building. These are some strategies and boundaries that I have set up in my space and in my building, because there weren't any before. So this took a lot of work and growth mindset for me and for the classroom teachers as well, to make sure that we can be successful. So if you don't manage to type technology also listen in this might also actually help you with your classroom as well and how things are managed. Even though I am the designated technology person, STEM isn't and shouldn't be the only class in the building where students use technology. So there might be mixed opinions of this in your building. But this shouldn't be the only time they're using devices. We are living in a digital age and students should be interacting and using technology in different ways throughout the day. We do as teachers, we don't just use it to type a word document, althoughwe're hopefully using it as a creation tool and a teaching tool. And we have to teach our students that. So likewise, if teachers are using this in their classroom, they also have to learn how to troubleshoot and do all that this goes back to growth mindset. I didn't know any of this stuff, I knew little things here and there coming into this role, but I didn't even know the Wi Fi password for two weeks in this role. So there definitely is needs to be a growth mindset. I know you can't tell people that but also giving teachers the opportunity to troubleshoot on their own and try it and giving them the tools to be successful, will also help you out as well with the boundaries. 

Naomi Meredith  18:32

A couple of ways that I do this is I will talk to the staff at the beginning of the year of what my role is and ways that they can get support with technology help. So a lot of teachers who are new in the building don't even know what STEM is. So I'll even explain that and how that's different than a technology class. You might be lucky and work in a building where you have STEM and technology I know of teachers who've had that even to showing the difference between the two and how tools will be used in your space. So that will help teachers with their lesson planning. Also, I provide them a back to school technology checklist. I will link this in the show notes. It'll be completely free. So you can check it out, modify how you need it. But it is a digital checklists I'll send out a couple weeks before school starts. They can look at it when they need. But I will not only have a checklist of things they need to set up in their room on their teacher device for student accounts during that work week. But I will also link videos and helpful guides that will help them through that process if they don't know how to do it. Likewise, they really encourage us for you before me for the teachers to really help each other out. Often I will see teachers asked me a question but then their teammate just asked me the day before the same question I went in and help them so it really helps encourage them to talk to each other to problem solve the problem. Also, if you're in a similar position and even think about the technology that you have in your classroom, if there is not a system in place, set one up, out was in charge of assigning all of the devices in my school and when we became a one to one district, so that meant every student in our district would have a device that was assigned to them like a library book. And this change came maybe a few weeks before school started. And I was in charge of assigning all of them to 500 plus units by myself. So there was no system set in place. So that is something that I set up that is repeatable by me. Or if there was anybody else who was in my position or helping me with that would be so lovely if I had help, but that way that it could be repeatable as well. 

Naomi Meredith  20:35

So setting up this system for any tool that you're using in your classroom is really helpful so that others can understand the process as well. And it will help you wrap your mind around it. Also, any way that you can get students and teachers involved in the process. For us students will use the same device every year for four years, and then they'll get a new device. And so that means students end the school year their devices are in their cart, and then they have to go with them to the next grade. Well, that's a lot on one person to assign out. So what I'll do is, I'll put all of the carts in our library, and then teachers will come bring their classroom to the library to get their last year's device, after they've talked about digital citizenship and handling their device. And then they'll bring it back to the room and then I'll deliver the classroom cart. So that's a good incentive as well, because if they don't pick up their device, they won't have a cart that I can reassign. So it also gets that buy in as well, where it's also not all on me, but it's helping with that responsibility too. As a recap, here are the three STEM teacher boundaries that you can set up to really help maximize your time and your productivity. First, we talked about starting and ending your class on time. Next is owning your email. And finally setting up systems and routines when it comes to your technology management. Like I said before, setting up boundaries is okay and it can be hard at first finding things that will work for you. But in the long run if you are being consistent with yourself and consistent with others. It will really help preserve your time and get you to the part where you are teaching the kids doing what you love and making a big impact in your classroom. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the elementary STEM coach podcast. I would love to connect with you over on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore or send me an email to elementary STEM Coach podcast@gmail.com. Also make sure to check out my website Naomi meredith.com To see all the show notes from today's episode, and Chapman K through five STEM resources. Any questions you have needs for resources or ideas for episodes, get in touch. I'll talk to you soon.