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This video’s sole purpose is to recommend some tools, gadgets, or resources that I know will help you better manage the insane pace of a teacher’s daily teaching life.  They are not top tech tools, they are not organization specific, they are simply things that allow me, and many other teachers I work with, to get a better grasp on life and managing all of the roles they play that are most important to them.

What roles do you play in life?  I guess the better question is, who are you?  You’re probably a teacher.  Are you also a mom or dad? Are you also a friend, a homeowner, a person who prioritizes health and taking care of your body?

Well this video will help you manage all aspects of who you are, not just who you are as a teacher.

Top 5 Tools for...

Kids have just left your room, you grab your lunch from the fridge and decide to have a working lunch (because, yes, those are ok to have every once in a while) in the peace and quiet of your empty classroom, and as you sit down and open your laptop, you immediately lose all semblance of peace and quiet when you open your email to find 15 new emails amid your inbox that already has over 200 messages needing your attention.

Among those emails are no less than a few reminding you of past emails you have not responded to yet, and there goes your peaceful and lite working lunch.

Much like we talked about in last week’s episode referring to project management and all the roles we fill as teachers, we are filling the position of around 5 people.  It’s high time we start acting like someone who fulfills 5 positions by using a project management tool, and by streamlining how we handle our email inbox.

After listening to this episode you’ll be ready to tackle what is...

You’ve already taken the big step in being more efficient with your lesson planning by doing it digitally like we talked about back in episode 50, now it’s time to take it one step further, and really it just makes sense to take it one step further with your time and task management as a teacher.  Here’s the truth, as much as what we do in helping kids learn can be super simple, as educators we have plenty of spinning plates in the air.  We are in charge of lots of projects and other moving parts of our day, leaving us with somewhere around ten things we’re managing at any given time.  There’s got to be a better way to manage all that we do other than in a paper planner or calendar.

Because, here’s the thing… The management of time and tasks is the greatest low-grade, yet constant stressor of life, is it not?  Especially for teachers.  The autonomy we have as teachers is truly one of the best aspects of the career...

When I first started teaching, I hated lesson planning.  I loved teaching from day one, but when I had to sit down and write out plans I was doing it on someone else’s terms (meaning it wasn’t in the format that was helpful to me), and I knew by writing it down I would look at it once and then have to redo it again next year.

I hate doing things twice.

That’s when I stopped writing my lesson plans on paper and kept them completely digital.  Most teams I worked on did the same, which gave us a huge advantage because then our plans were sharable.  That’s a total game changer when it comes to collaboration for a team - seriously, it was beautiful.

Collaboration and team planning is one of the biggest benefits to digital lesson plans, but there are many others, and I want to point you to episode 5 of this podcast where I give 3 Steps to Sustainable Planning, and the first step is to go digital.  In that episode I talk about the benefits, so...

Welcome back to the Sustainable Teacher, I hope your week so far is going as smoothly as possible, and that you have found this episode at just the right time, whenever that time might be for you.  This episode will be a conversation about EdTech, but more so on the technology that is teacher-facing, and less student-facing.  

Oftentimes in conversation and professional development involving educational technology, the focus is on student-facing technology and what newest tool can be used to have impact in your lessons.  Although It's not bad that this is the main focus, it’s not the only way that technology can benefit a teacher and a classroom.  So in this episode we’ll be talking about teacher tech and how to leverage technology to make a part of your day more sustainable, and the part of your day we’ll focus on in this episode is parent communication.

Sure, technology, in most areas, is great.  It improves efficiency and even...