Hi. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to Get Organized, How to Be a Together Teacher. Now, there are lots of books that discuss being organized. And most don't actually specify a particular trade or certain job. So sometimes people ask me, hey Maya, what's different about teaching compared to pretty much every other job? I mean really, in today's digital world, everyone needs a strong organizational system, right? I think that is absolutely true, but here's why this course is designed with the educator in mind. Let's say that teaching is roughly 50% instructing children, and 50% analyzing student work and planning your future lessons. But instructional time usually takes up at least 80% of the work day. That leaves precious little unstructured time, for you to review, prepare, meet, analyze, make phone calls, maybe even eat lunch. Think about it another way. Here's a list of stuff that has to get done. Could be a teachers to do list, could be mine, or could be a parents. Now my calendar for the week usually starts out pretty flexible. I can slot my to do's into time slots, sort of move things around as needed. The post office gets crowded in the afternoons, I can go in the morning. As teachers, our time is not our own. Our schedule starts out looking like this. So we have to be incredibly protective of precious 20 minute, ten minute or honestly even five minute packets, of unstructured time. Let me tell you a little bit about the course. There's five sessions. The first, which you've just started, is an introduction, and it provides an opportunity for reflection about your current tools and habits. The following four sessions will each focus on a different aspect, or tool, of a togetherness system, and will contain a mixture of video instruction, reflection questions, readings, and practice assignments to be peer reviewed. Now, this course is completely self paced, so you're free to move as fast, or as slow as you might want. My advice would be to complete a session and then try using the new tools or mindsets in your classroom before you move on to the next session, that way you'll build a muscle memory and a togetherness system that works for you. Also do the assignments and really dig into the galleries of examples that you and your colleagues upload. The only way you're going to become more together is by practice. By the end of this course you are going to build a portable organization system. It will likely have a pen and paper element like a clipboard, or one of those cheap plastic covers that I endearingly call the flexi and you'll likely make use of technology like a tablet or a smartphone, it's your choice. The point here is that I need you to have a thing you always carry to keep yourself together. One teacher even named his system, Russell. Along the way we'll be joined by teachers who have each been using some kind of togetherness system for the past few years. You'll get to hear their reflections and you'll even be invited on an open house tour of their systems. To close out this introduction I want you to think about a truly together week in your work and your life. I know you've had them. Hopefully they happen often. So think, what needs to happen in your respective lives for you to say, on a Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, whew, that was a terrific week. I got everything accomplished, and maybe even slept enough. Let's listen to what our teachers had to say. >> A really successful week Monday to Friday, Friday leaving feeling really good, happens when I've been realistic about what is truly a priority and what's truly a deadline. >> It's not one where I finish every single task, but one where I've identified the tasks that I still have to do and figure out when I'm going to do them. >> I need to have my weekly plan for the next week. >> For me to feel really successful I need to go to the gym at least three times a week. >> My student work that I had collected from that week was already graded and entered on our online system. >> My classroom, I needed to like feel clean when I'm leaving. >> I already had lesson plans at least through Wednesday of the following week. >> Everything got crossed out. To me that is, that is like, it's almost like winning an Oscar and, or winning a Grammy and everybody knows I love music and I love Beyonce, and I feel like, it's like, I feel like Beyonce on stage winning the Grammy because I feel that I've accomplished. >> Who doesn't want to feel like Beyonce? Now it's your turn. What does your perfect week look like? In the context of a school, togetherness really means having a plan to accomplish all of your to do's, in very small pockets of time, and a system for capturing new work as it inevitably comes flying at you in the hallway. We all have busy busy lives, and teachers in particular have no time to waste.
