Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher turned K-5 STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master's degree in STEM leadership, I'm here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

You're teaching hundreds of kids a day. You have before school duties, after school clubs, lesson meetings, staff meetings, all the things that comes with being a teacher in general, and it is still busy being a STEM teacher. How can you keep track of it all and maximize your work time and also all of those little tasks throughout each and every day? I'm going to be sharing with you my systems and hacks that I use religiously as a teacher and also as a small business owner.

They might seem very simple, but they work very, very well, and it has helped me stay productive and keep track of all the many things that are going on each day. I hope you are liking this short episode format. They're really fun for me to record a little bit hard because I just want to talk and talk and talk, but I hope that you are getting a lot out of it.

So let me know, write a review or send me a message on Instagram. I would love to hear how you're liking this new format. The first thing that really helps me stay on top of things is the way that I manage my emails.

And this might sound counterintuitive what I'm going to explain. But hear me out. This is what I do.

I actually do have the email apps on my phone. As a classroom teacher, I actually did not because I felt like you got a lot more parent emails in that way. But when I became a STEM teacher, I actually got the app on my phone.

And what the first thing that I did was I switched my email notifications to only turn on at a certain time of the day during the week, and then turn off. So I believe I had my email turn on from six to 4pm. I still got emails outside of those times, but I wasn't notified.

And I really want to go in and check unless there's something really, really, really important I need to keep track of. Otherwise, I wouldn't get those notifications. This is also really helpful too.

Because if you're on vacation, you can just delete that email app, but then you can have to resign in and do all the things I would just go in put myself like turn off notifications completely during those longer breaks and easy as that. Like I said, you can check when you need to. I also will check my emails all day and respond all day.

And I know most people are totally against that they need to be in the moment and everything. I am a busy person on the go, I will respond to you as soon as I can. And I will move that message that goes along with my second tip into a folder.

I hardly delete messages in my email, if there's spam, sure. But I have folders for everything, everything. When I was teaching every single grade level had their own folder, every single project, every type of event, or there's a district folder, there was a school folder, I have folders for everything.

Because then everything was sorted and organized, my inbox usually has about 10 to 15 emails in there. Because those are things that I am working on projects. And then when I'm finished, I will move it into the folder.

So I know everyone has different systems, maybe they never delete anything or never move any emails. For me, that's visually crazy. And so I answer emails all throughout the day.

During that work time, I answer on my phone, if it's a longer email, I will sit down and respond. But this works very, very well, because I hardly ever, as a teacher sit down and just answer emails all day. That is not what I would do, I would answer them on the go, and then move on to the next thing.

And when I get to school, I had more time for lesson planning, which is what you really want to be doing. Next is how I use my Google Calendar. This is also something I am very obsessed about.

And it actually makes sense. Because as a kid, I was obsessed about getting a new planner every school year. And I love a good planner, I'm more into notebooks for writing checklists down for tasks.

This is another side tip, I actually use a blank notebook. For my daily tasks, I write down everything that's in my head, I need to get done. And then if I finish them, I will highlight them.

So I know what it is. But visually, I know it's finished, but I can see what I finished. And then each day, I will rewrite the tasks I didn't get done and write down any fresh ones.

So that way, I don't have a million sticky notes going on. But that's just like a little hack. I don't use a paper planner anymore, I am obsessed about my Google Calendar.

What I will do is I will sit down and type in every single schedule that I have with my students. So what is my daily schedule, my Wednesdays were always different than Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, the times would change because we had an early release day. So I would sit down, it's easier on your computer.

If you do this, by the way, I would sit down, I would put in all the times for all of my grade levels. And then you can even put in ending dates, you can delete certain dates so that you actually don't have anything going on. Again, during a break, it looks like a break, I would put in all of my schedules.

And then I also would put in the school calendar. So days off all of that, those all went in my Google Calendar, and I made sure to put it in my school account. So anything that was school related went into my school Google Calendar.

Now this goes along with the emails thing, if there was ever an event or something happening at school or a field trip, there was a time change, a class is gone, I immediately go into my Google Calendar, make the change to that date. Because even with reoccurring dates in Google Calendar, you can actually change specific things and it will ask you do you want to change all of them, or just one of them, I would go in and change it and then put that email where it needs to go. So you're like double dipping our school actually used Outlook, which I'm not a personal fan.

I know you can connect your calendars and stuff that way. But I prefer Google Calendar because I would have my school Google Calendar. And then I have my personal Google Calendar and then also my business Google Calendar.

But on your phone, that's really cool is you can actually see all of your calendars at once and go from there. So I still do the same thing and put every single thing in my Google Calendar. And that is how I keep track of everything.

Something new that I'm really obsessed with are new to me is the tasks. So I'm really bad at doing laundry. This is like something about me I'm really, really, really bad at, I don't do it, don't put it away, I don't stay on top of it.

But something with me with laundry is I can handle one load a day. And so with those things that you should be washing every so often, like the towels I wash every week, I couldn't remember when I did the towels. So I actually put in reoccurring tasks in my Google Calendar.

So they don't take over as events, they can happen anytime. If you schedule an event on that day, they don't override each other. But I actually put in reoccurring tasks in my Google Calendar.

So I know on this day, I do towels, and I can check it off. And then the task will repeat every week. So if you have that going on in your STEM classroom, there's things that you have a hard time remembering, but you know, you need to do it, the tasks are really helpful, because it's just a visual checklist.

And you can see it all in there in your calendar, especially if there's a deadline for something, and it will keep popping up, it'll move each day, if you don't go in and check it off, it will move on to your next day, like pay credit cards need to do that. So those are really, really helpful. But again, I'm very, very obsessed about my Google Calendar.

And I even figured out how to link all my Google calendars, you link it to your phone. So I have an iPhone, and it talks to my watch. So all of my events for the day pop up on my watch.

This is the same with my school schedule with kids. So then I knew exactly when things were happening. I didn't have to go to my computer, it was all right there for me.

It's either my phone is on my watch. And I it was just one less thing I had to worry about because I set that system up in place. And finally, the last system and hack that I like to use to help with my productivity as a STEM teacher is using timers.

I use timers with students and I use them for myself as a human as a teacher. As you can tell, I can forget things and there's a lot going on. And especially reading the clock and being in the moment and managing the projects and who's in the bathroom and this fight and then who's cutting somebody's hair with the scissors.

The last thing I am worrying about is checking the time on the clock. I've always want to watch teaching. But I just have a hard time just I'm just really in the moment.

That's really what it is. And so what I will do is as students, I send them off to work. So I have my mini lesson, all that I'm not worried about the time.

Because I always can get it done really, really quick. Unless there is a stern talking to my mini lessons are short, five to eight minutes, eight minutes of them teaching them a new tech tool. But when I send the kids off to work, I immediately again, I go to my watch, but I immediately my watch set a timer for when I want them to clean up.

So I, depending on the class, it's five to 10 minutes, some need 10, some need five, some need three, some are really quick. But I will set a timer for myself. So then my watch will buzz when I want them to clean up.

Depending on the class, I will actually put up a timer for the students. The timer for the students on the screen might not match what is on my watch. It might be the same, it might be different.

If it's station rotations, it wouldn't be the same because they're at their station shorter. Or sometimes I will like put a timer, you have two more minutes left. Again, it really depends on the class.

But I have the master timer on my watch. And then the one on the screen for the students is whatever I need them to be timed for what I want them to do. Are you going to do this job for five minutes, after the timer goes off, you're going to switch.

So see what I mean how their timer wouldn't match mine. That's what I mean by that. My favorite timer to use that doesn't have scary sounds is classroom screen.com. This is not sponsored, I am obsessed.

It has a little clock and timer widget you can put up. You can also put images and embed Google Slides and stuff everywhere. So you can literally have a million things on your screen.

That is for that lesson. So that is how I like to hack timers. I use timers.

This is so crazy. I depending on the class, I only had five minutes or 10 minutes in between classes. And I need to go to the bathroom or I needed to go get some water or whatever and make some copies.

My passing time would start I would set a timer on my watch. I knew I had that much time before my next class would start. I actually kept my door closed in between classes for safety issues.

But also a class couldn't just appear in my room five minutes early, I'm busy, I have things to do that was a boundary I would set, which I do have an episode about setting boundaries, which boundaries are very, very important as a teacher. But I would set timers like that I set timers for myself like this all the time. Sounds like an advertisement for Apple Watch.

It's not you can set a timer lots of different ways. But this is going to help you again, it's those little things you don't have to think about anymore, but help you stay productive. So funny enough, these are all different hacks that I like to use using technology.

And I'm wondering if any of you use those same types of things. Let me know, send me a DM, I hope that this was helpful for you. And if you haven't already, before you move on to your day, make sure to go and review this podcast, write something that you're loving about it.

We are getting up to 180 episodes. And I know I don't have 180 reviews. So I would love to see what you think of the podcast.

If you've been a longtime listener, first time writer, let me know. And thank you so much. I hope you're having a wonderful back to school and I will see you in the next episode.

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 at gmail.com. Also, make sure to check out my website Naomi Meredith calm to see all the show notes from today's episode and shop my 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.