How To Prepare for Teacher Maternity Leave in 4 Simple Steps [episode 58]

Kelsey

You are listening to episode number 58 of wife teacher mommy the podcast how to prepare for a teacher maternity leave in four simple steps. If you are getting ready for maternity leave as a teacher consider this your teacher maternity leave checklist. You’ll walk away from today’s episode knowing what to do now, so you can rest while you’re on your teacher maternity leave and enjoy your little one. And these tips will also work for a teacher or paternity leave as well. So let’s dive in

Kelsey

I’m so glad you’re here listening to wife teacher mommy the podcast today. I’m your host Kelsey Sorenson, a former elementary teacher turned home school mom. Whether you are a teacher or a homeschool parent, my goal at wife teacher mommy is to provide you with both teaching ideas and mindset tools. To help you live your absolute best teacher life. Be sure to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. Now let’s go.

Kelsey

Okay, so pregnancy, when you’re expecting a little one, this is such an exciting time. Whether it’s your first child, your second or your fifth child is always something to look forward to adding another little one to your family. But as we all know, there’s so much planning that goes into having a little one, not only are you setting up your baby registries, and planning a baby shower, perhaps or you know, getting the nursery ready, you also need to plan for your leave as a teacher, you have to make sure that your long term sub has what they need that your students are ready for you to go, there’s a lot to take in a lot for you to do and it might feel a little bit overwhelming. So today we’re going to talk about the practical strategies that you can implement so you can feel rested and assured that your maternity leave will go off without a hitch. So today, I’m going over four simple steps for you. And if you do these things, then you’ll know that you’re all set.

Okay, so let’s dive right into the first one. I’m just diving right into content today. So for the first one, we want to take care of yourself during your pregnancy physically and mentally. So you can prepare. Because if you aren’t taking care of yourself both physically and mentally, it’s hard to plan ahead when you’re not even taking care of yourself right now. So make sure that physically you are feeding yourself if you are pregnant, you’re growing a child, growing a baby makes you hungry. So make sure that you have healthy snacks around so you can quickly eat while students are working. And normally as a teacher, I wouldn’t do this. But when I was pregnant, it was necessary. I just told my students that the baby was hungry, they were totally fine with that. And I’m sure yours will be too. Now another physical thing you need to do to take care of yourself is taking regular bathroom breaks. And yes, even though you have to use the bathroom it is important to stay hydrated because that is probably needed to be healthy as well. And when I was pregnant, I would need to on occasion find a quick woman to run to the bathroom and have the teacher next door kind of watch both classrooms or whatever is needed. That’s really a necessity when you’re pregnant. You need to build a drink that water you need to be able to take those bathroom breaks and just you know you can figure out a way how to do it.

Make that happen. Have your team support each other. Okay, the next thing to do for yourself physically is to make sure that you are dressing comfortably so you can you know move around easily as a teacher while you are pregnant because when I was teaching, you know the bigger you get your up and move around dropping to help lots of kids. You want to look professional still but you want to be comfortable. And what I did is I found some stretchy dress pants at Ross. They were so stretchy they were soft they were kind of more like leggings but they were they totally looked like they were dress pants. Now that was back in 2014. Now since then there are so many more options out there for professional but stretchy and comfy leggings. I really don’t think this should be a problem for you to find something comfortable but it’s just being intentional and making sure you find that time to find those comfy outfits. You deserve it. You are working hard to grow that baby Okay, and now I might need to do a whole episode about this but you also need to make sure that you take your sick days when you need it during In your pregnancy, I know that you’re probably like, oh, I need to save my sick days, I need to have them for my maternity leave, I totally get it.

And I’m not saying not to save your days as much as you can. But if you’re feeling really sick, don’t shy away from if you need to use a day or two, while you’re pregnant to recoup, to recover, so you can do all the preparations that you need for your maternity leave. So it’s just something I want you to keep in mind. Now, we want to prepare ourselves mentally as well. So like I mentioned in a recent episode that you definitely need to check out that is episode number 56. So just two episodes ago, it’s called How to Practice true self care is a teacher and or parent. Now, if you’re listening to this episode, and you’re really into it, chances are you might even be both. So self care is not selfish. Remind yourself that you do deserve all of these things that I mentioned all the physical self care, and then also doing the work to think that you deserve it to knowing that, oh, I deserve to do all this stuff. I deserve to take care of myself well, physically and mentally. Another way to take care of yourself mentally is making a list of inspiring thoughts to think when you’re teaching, both during your pregnancy or during your maternity leave, have some thoughts that can help you get through it, such as I can do hard things, or I’m an awesome teacher, or, man, I can grow a baby and I can teach isn’t that incredible? So make a list of these inspiring thoughts that you can have, like I am the best teacher I could possibly be. I am doing an incredible thing. I am an amazing mother and an amazing teacher. Or what can I do today to make things a little bit easier for me and baby.

Ask yourself questions like that too. as teachers and as moms, we tend to put the needs of children, whether they’re our students or our own, above our own, or even other people like our teammates, or our admin or neighbors, even when you are pregnant, you need to make sure that your health is a top priority. And this includes not only your physical health, but also your mental, emotional, spiritual, all the different health that you could possibly have. Make sure you are taking care of yourself. And that is why I put this first as the first thing you need to do do whatever you need to do. At the end of the day, go on a quick walk, take a bath, binge watch NetFlix, if you’ve had a hard day you can vent about your problems or concerns to someone you can trust. We all know those pregnancy hormones can make us a little emotional at times, at least it did for me and talking to someone you rely on can help. I was so thankful for my husband and my mom. And so my great friends who I talked with, who listened to me all the time and gave me that support that I needed. And we are also happy to be that support system for you. If you’re in wife, teacher mommy club, you can hop on a coaching call and get coached or simply listen to the private podcast to help you get in a lighter headspace, which is often needed during pregnancy. And you can also post and get support and camaraderie from teacher Mama’s like you, anytime in our free wife, teacher, mommy United Facebook group, there will be lots of teacher moms in there who have been through this pregnancy while teaching thing, especially if it’s your first time, you can get lots of great feedback in that group. Okay, so that is number one. And a lot of those tips still apply even if you’re not pregnant, even if you’re adopting, or if you’re a dad, any of those things still take care of yourself while you’re preparing to have a new little one, join your family.

Just wanted to say that quick before I move on to the next one. Okay, number two is keeping parents and students in the know, all along the way. Now, first, you might have a certain period of time where you’re wanting to wait to announce it and maybe you’re waiting till after the first trimester, it might depend on how sick you get. If you’re getting really sick, you might need to tell them a bit sooner, you’re you might have a really great relationship with your admin and want to let them know right away. It that is all up to you. But as soon as you’re ready to announce your pregnancy, let your students know as soon as you can. And a great way to do this is announce it in a super fun way. So one thing that we have in our pregnancy announcement is we have these little riddles that students will get to solve we have math or language arts ones where you just assign it as if it’s a regular assignment. But then the riddle the thing that they solve the message, the secret message is my teacher is having a baby or my teacher is having babies we have a twin version if you need that. That is a really fun way to do it. Also, you could just have another fun idea is that you can have a bunch of different baby things like baby carrots or baby I wouldn’t do a baby bottle or something like that.

That’s going to give it away but baby carrots, baby back ribs. Just have a few things that relate to baby and see if the students can guess what is going on. This might work better for like upper grade students but with lower grade ones that maybe could do things a little more obvious like have a bottle or a binky pick one of these have in common. What do you think? And then you can just kind of have a discussion. I don’t know that you’re about to have a baby. They generally will get really excited with you now share whatever you feel comfortable sharing with your students whether it’s having that gender reveal a guessing game brand name, or having a guessing game for the delivery date, anything you’re willing to share with your students to build classroom community and help them get excited for the baby kind of bring them along with the process. And younger students or even some older students can feel apprehensive about you going on leave You’ve so prepare them by giving baby updates along the way as deemed appropriate. Giving them like, Hey, I have this many weeks left until her maternity sub comes. And if possible, introduce your students to the substitute ahead of time, having a new teacher show up out of the blue can be overwhelming for many elementary school students. So see if you can have a transmission day where your sub comms gets acquainted with your students and your routines, and has an overview of the plans and curriculum, you may also consider having your long term sub when you have doctor’s appointments or any other short term sub days prior to your leave if possible. So if you know who your sub will be months ahead of time, when you have some appointments leading up to baby, you could have that sub come in, and then they can actually have your sub a few times.

And that might really help ease them into that having that teacher come in. Now let’s talk about parents. So we talked about number two is again getting parents and students in the know. So for parents, one thing I like to do is send home letters to parents keeping them in the know along the way. So first, you can let them know once you announce you’re expecting as soon as you have tell the students make sure to have a letter ready to be sent home to let the parents know. So they’re not just hearing it from their child, that the parents know the approximate time you will be gone. And what you were doing to prepare the students for your absence sometimes, especially, you know, some parents more than others might be a little bit nervous as well. It might be like, Oh, are they getting an inexperienced teacher or what is going to happen when you leave what’s going to happen with my student and our progress. So kind of talk to them about what that is going to look like. They’ll also be less likely to put place unrealistic demands or expect communication while you’re on leave. If you bring them along the process and really explain everything right up front. Another great time to reach out to them is when you know who your maternity leave sub is. And once you kind of have a process in place for that letting them know like, Hey, this is our sub this is their experience. This is what’s going on.

Here are some things about them how you can contact them, kind of get them acquainted with the year long term subsidy know that once you’re on leave, that is the person who they need to content. Now another letter you can do is closer when the baby comes, you can have a letter, whether you’re planning on returning to the classroom after a certain period of time, or if it’s the end of the school year, or if you’re going to become a stay at home parent. This can help just let them know what to expect. And now our maternity leave letters that we created can help with this. Those are in our shop where you can download and access them as a Club member. We have pre written letters for all these things. And then you just need to customize them with your own information. They’re also really cute and baby themed and ready to go. They’re pre written templates, all you need to do is add the name, date, etc. There’s one for announcing your pregnancy with intent to return after the baby another if you plan on staying home or if it’s the end of the school year, by the time your leave is over. There’s another one that you can use to give an update any kind of update and to introduce your long term sub and of course, the initial one just to announce that you are pregnant and that more updates are to come. Okay, so now after a quick break, I’m going to be telling you everything you need to know about tip number three, which is putting together a detailed maternity binder. So I’ll be breaking down everything you need to include in this binder all together for you. So don’t go anywhere. I’m interrupting this episode for just a moment to share an experience from one of our newest incredible members of wife, teacher mommy club. Her name is Ashley and I just love having her as a member of the club. Here’s what she’s had to say so far

I joined wife, teacher mommy cub, because there are just so many resources available to club members, classroom resources and the personal side with the coaching. That is a huge resource that I did not have prior to joining the club. And it’s been really great getting an outside perspective on problems and issues that I might be facing. And it really helps me to see them from another perspective for me, wife, teacher, mommy Club offers more than just the resources. It has that coaching component and it has the Facebook group and the compute community component. It also has, you know, that professional development component, the Educate, rejuvenate series, and all those things together I think helped me in my job as a teacher. It’s not just a one off thing. All of that together really helps make the whole package I want all of the things and wife teacher mommy gives that to me.

Kelsey

To learn more about wife, teacher mommy club, go to wife, teacher mommy.com/club To request an invite for the next time that we open the doors and hope to see you inside the club soon.

Kelsey

Okay, we’re back. Now let’s talk about your detailed maternity leave binders number three is that we want to put together that detail maternity leave binder I just mentioned. So organizing your plans in a binder is a great way for it to be easier for you and make running your classroom much simpler for your long term substitute. All the information your sub needs is all laid out. So all that’s left for you to do is fill it in once you do all the things that I have mentioned here. Now some things to include in your maternity leave binder on top of what you would include in a normal set binder, which are things like your class info, your class list, a seating chart, but for your maternity leave binder, you’ll want to include even more information I go into even more detail on episode number six of why wife, teacher, mommy the podcast, which is how to write sub plans that keep subs coming back. So I recommend you include everything that I mentioned in the short term sub binder, I’ll briefly go over that here. But I would highly recommend checking out that episode as well. It really goes hand in hand with this one. So for just any sub binder, including your maternity leave one, so I want to mention these today, you want to include a seating chart, that’s very important so that your sub knows where each student is, but you might want to include an editable version, because your sub might want to change it around. So in our sub binder, we have this drag and drop seating chart so you can include that so your sub can adjust as needed. You’ll also want to include all versions of your schedules such as just the bell schedule, the schedule you use for teaching your school schedule, an alternate schedule for if you have like a short day, early out day or late start day special schedule or assembly schedule all the schedules that some would run into when they’re in your classroom for potentially a 12 week period, or however long I believe you’re taking 812 weeks I know it’s kind of sad how short some maternity leaves are. Another thing you want to include is school and staff info, they might be brand new to your schools, they’re going to want to know like, Hey, who the who can they reach out to for help who’s dependable, who are all the different people whose names will want to know classroom info. So like you know how many students you have, where basic things are located, and all of that a list of all your students anything they need to know about accommodations. IEP is health needs, who gets pulled out at what times for different enrichment and whatnot, you want to have your class rules, your behavior management, any attention prompts and transition procedures, including all of these things, helps your sub keep things as consistent as possible, makes things easier on the sub and makes things easier on your students. And for you when you come back. So well if you’re coming back, so things can stay as consistent as they possibly can. You’ll want to include arrival and dismissal procedures, attendance and bathroom procedures, lunch assembly, lockdown, fire, any sort of drills or natural disasters or indoor recess. And yeah, that is the gist of your regular sub binder things. Those are things I recommend having even in just your everyday sub binder, because it’s important for even just a regular day to go smoothly. And so you come back and things go well also, you never know if you might need to take like a two week quarantine or whatever like we had back a couple years ago. If you’ll need to take multiple days off, it’s nice to always have all this info I just mentioned in a sub binder all the time for maternity leave, there are even more things you’re going to want such as a classroom tour, this is where you actually have go around you take pictures of things in your classroom, explain where things are, what they need to use it for, just so they can kind of flip through the book like okay, I kind of understand how this classroom is laid out. And this is because they’re going to be there for an extended period of time, I would not recommend including this, we’re just like a short term stuff that’s like a bit overboard, but for a long term sub, very helpful. So the next thing that is great to include is called student profiles. Now I that’s what I call this, but they’re basically information sheets about your students. So you’ll want to have each student’s name by their pictures that can like easily identify them, you’ll want to have information about their academics about their behavior and tips for success with each student, they’re going to be working with these students for quite a while. So just having a little cheat sheet of like, so they can even look at it before they come into the classroom and kind of even be familiar with them super helpful and just nice for them to be able to refer back to and then when you have it, they can even take additional notes on there, we have both half page, full page and fourth page versions of those available so you can customize them to your own needs. Another one is going over your class jobs. So if you do class jobs, you’re going to want your subjects know how exactly you run them what the jobs are information about that. Next, you’ll want to have a subject specific cheat sheet. So all core subjects, specials and technology. So you’ll want to put kind of cheat sheets of this is how we run our math book, or this is how we run our language arts book and let them know so they can again, kind of keep that as consistent as they can, of course they’re going to put their own flair on it, that’s totally fine. But it’s nice for them to just kind of know how you run things. Same with any guided reading math centers, or language arts centers as well. Next, you’re going to want to keep track of how students get home. So which students can generally get picked up which ones walk home, which ones ride the bus. And then for bus info which students go on which bus number this is all good information for your stub to have. Next you’re going to want any information about accommodations. I believe that was mentioned before. But again, this is super important to have student info such as birthdays, passwords, login info, lunch numbers, all of this is good for your substitute to have as well so they can keep things running smoothly for you. You’re going to need to include your login info in this binders, they can log in anything that you need. You could also use a tool like LastPass or something you can say you can have all your passwords there and they can easily just log in. And last but not least are is volunteer information about parents, any parents who might be coming in so they can know about that. Okay, so that is the general information you’re going to want to include in your maternity leave binder now Let’s talk a little bit about the planning. Because a lot of people think that they need to do all the planning for their entire four, eight or 12 week maternity leave, they didn’t have every single detail plan. Now I’m here to tell you, you don’t need to plan every single detail of every single day for 12 weeks, that is going to be very overwhelming, because you’d be doing that on top of all the planning you’re doing leading up to your maternity leave. And all the things we mentioned about like you’re just getting ready for your baby and doing all the other things in your life. So generally speaking, usually, a maternity leave sub is long term sub who has more experience than they’re able to do some of this planning and teaching, if you leave them with a scope and sequence. Now, so I would recommend is having two weeks of fully dedicated plan, so they have that to kind of jump right in. But then from there, you can kind of leave more of like a general scope of what they need to teach, they’ll have that two weeks, so plans to kind of see how you do things, and then they can figure it out from there. So you can then include weekly planning pages lined pages that they can use, give them that like year at a glance month at a glance, and that scope and sequence for the full length of your maternity leave. Now keep in mind, nothing can replace you and things might not go 100% according to plan, but the most important thing is that you can focus on your baby. So Trust yourself, trust them, that they can handle this, you are taking a leave, you might be taking paid time off that you aren’t you might be taking some unpaid time off with FMLA. So you deserve to relax as much as you can and know that your students are going to be okay, kind of do some of that mindset, work with yourself and remind yourself those thoughts like my students are going to be okay. Everything will be exactly how it’s supposed to be students will be able to get caught up, it’s totally fine. So just don’t stress about it, let yourself do their job, which is being a long term substitute teacher, meaning they get to teach, they get to do some of that planning. So you don’t have to feel all of that burden completely on yourself when you have so much else going on to. Now the fourth and final tip is to maintain a good relationship with your long term sub. So communication with your said before your lead is very important. And having those detailed two weeks that binder with all the information they could possibly need their contact info, so they can contact you when needed clear expectations of how and when to contact you being as clear as possible. So they just know what to expect. Establish that good rapport and let them know that you trust their judgment, you trust them to make some decisions. Because if you micromanage every little thing, they’re going to want to keep contacting you about how should I do this? How should I do that? How should I do that? And that is going to make your lead so much more overwhelming than if you’re just like, hey, I trust you. And then even if they ask you a question, you might even say like, I don’t know, what do you think and let them make a decision, show them that you trust them to make that decision. Now, although you won’t want constant contact with them during your leave, you’ll be so busy with your baby checking in with yourself can help you continue to establish that good long term relationship. Since your students will get to know your sub and they will get on your sub will get to know your class, you might want to be able to call on them for short term absences after you’ve returned to work, especially when you make such a great relationship with yourself while there’s like a sub shortage going on. So maintaining that positive relationship will help keep the sub coming back to your classroom long after your maternity leave is over. And even when you have a new group of students. So you can just establish that relationship on the right foot. Okay, so let’s recap those four steps. So first, we talked all about taking care of yourself physically and mentally. And I put this first for a reason. It’s very important for you to take care of yourself and all the ways make sure you’re staying hydrated. Make sure you’re eating, make sure you’re taking bathroom breaks, make sure you’re taking sick days, if you need it, make sure that you are being conscious of your mindset and how you’re thinking of yourself and get support when you need it. Find a support group, they’ll be able to help you. Number two, we want to keep parents and students in the know, let your students know as soon as you’re ready to let them know you’re pregnant. Do it in a fun way, get them engaged in it, get them excited about the baby and prepare them for what’s to come when a maternity leave sub comes. Also with the parents make sure as soon as you let the students know send a letter home to the parents, keep sending letters home with updates all along the way. And let them know what to expect who the sub is as soon as you know how things are going to work if and when you’re coming back how that transition is going to play out so they can help prepare their child as well. Remember us, the parents and teachers we work together as a team. So just you know talk about it, keep them in the know and they’ll be able to help you by helping their child. Now third is put together a detailed maternity leave binder with all the things your son will want to know all the schedules classroom tore all the information about procedures and cheat sheets for each subject including a scope and sequence plus two weeks of plans. All of that to help your sub get off on the right foot. And so the other thing to remember is that you don’t need to plan every second to trust yourself to make decisions and have contact the way you would like to have it and make sure that is communicated and number four is when To have a good relationship with your long term sub, this will make things go well before and during your maternity leave. But also so you have a go to sub after your maternity leave, you could be cultivating a relationship that could be mutually beneficial for years to come. So don’t lose that opportunity to do that. Now that we’ve gone over these four steps, I want to let you know the resources that we have available wife, teacher, mommy that have been used by 10s of 1000s of teachers to help them with their maternity leaves, because I love helping teachers and moms. And these resources are ones that are very popular and Teachers Pay Teachers and they’re also available for our club members and in our own website shop. So first we have our pregnancy announcement. And this is where I kind of mentioned it during the episode, but we have those riddles where students are trying to solve the secret puzzle the secret message, which the secret message is our teachers having a baby or our teachers having babies plural, we have a math and language arts version. And we have versions for pre K through sixth grade, the entire grade range that we support. So those are super fun. Okay about our pregnancy announcement activities. Jill says very cute and a fun way to announce I split them into groups and gave them different sheets according to the math activity. And the first kids to figure it out. had fun watching the rest of the group solve the puzzle. Jasmine says my students were so surprised to learn about my pregnancy and I had a blast throughout the day giving out hints until the big reveal. Antoinette says love the multi grade choices since I teach at a tiny school my students had a blast doing activities and we’re excited to find the message. We have maternity leave letters that are pre written and make it really easy for you to send those letters home to parents all along the way. We have already written them you just need to update them with your own information. You can also change them more if you would like they’re completely editable but we have basically taken the hard part out for you and we’ve also made them really cute too which is a nice bonus. So Krista says about our maternity leave letter she said I use this to write a letter for my students parents so they were aware I would not be finishing the school year editable and clear. Tiffany says I was able to use the resource because I’m getting ready to go out on maternity leave. I did not have to come with a letter on my own. I made a few changes and then print yes this makes it so super easy for you to get those letters sent out and put together and Allison says this has been super helpful while preparing for my maternity leave it is very easy to use and allows me to not stress about my time out next we have a gender reveal activity. I did not mention this one but it’s so much fun. Where upper and lower grade activities. There’s like graphing where they get to guess like whether they think it’s a boy or girl there’s even like a physical one you could put on the whiteboard where they get a color the footprint either pink or blue and put it on the board and have a visual graphing and reveal activity where you could put it in the balloon and pop it there’s so many fun printables included in the gender reveal. And then after there’s a fun writing activity where they get to write to the baby, it’s just a lot of fun now about the gender reveal Sara says this was such a fun way to do a gender reveal with my students. I love that it could tie my reveal into our math block. And Georgia says such a wonderful way to tie in the wonderful news to related content. I love that the writing prompts as well. Then Ashley says my students and I had so much fun with this resource. The worksheets were very engaging and worth the money. Thank you for this fun resource. We have our maternity leave sub binder which is actually called the complete short and long term sub binder. And this has all of the sub binder forms it is huge. It is loved by 10s of 1000s of teachers for their maternity leaves let me just share some of these reviews with you about the maternity leave binder Jessica M says this resource was very well organized and had all the areas needed cover for my long term sub while on maternity everything was easy to edit and organize the design was very pretty. Katie says I use this for my recent maternity leave this year and my sub absolutely loved it. It was easy to put together and customize for my schedule. This is so amazing. It has over 1000 ratings on Teachers Pay Teachers. It is very proven. So if you’re going on maternity leave it is one of the top binders on TPT. I would highly recommend it. Jacqueline says I use this maternity leave binder to prepare to be out of the classroom for three months when I have my daughter it really set myself at ease to have all the information in one place. This resource is really thorough and thinks of every last detail and we shared it we put lots of work into this binder lots of updates. There’s even an alternate cover that’s not shown on the cover the resource that even has a cute pregnant woman with the baby bond. It’s another alternate option you can use if you would like and it is by far our most popular maternity leave resource. Okay, next let’s talk about our maternity leave sub plans. So as I mentioned, we like to include the that two weeks of plans are ready to go you’ll want to do these depending on what your usual schedule is. But it’s also good to include activities that they can use as filler whenever needed, especially where they’re doing some of the planning for the remaining remainder of your leave. And that is where our maternity leave sub plans come in. So these are very similar to our very popular ready to go sub plans that have been used by over 60,000 teachers. And but the difference is that These are baby themed. There’s so much fun. We have them for all subjects. There’s math, there’s language arts, there’s reading, there’s science or social studies, all related to babies and at grade level content. We currently have these for first through fifth grades, and they are so much fun. Communist says thank you, I will be using these as emergency plans. When I’ve gone on my maternity leave, there are so many options. Catherine says this resource is amazing took off so much stress when planning maternity leave, the resource includes everything you need. And Sarah said, I left this for some of my maternity plans. And I heard that my students loved it. They were engaged because they were also curious and interested in the baby. So easy to print. And the instruction sheets were very succinct for the sub perfect time saver. So to just give you a little example of what’s in here, so for example, some of the math like in third grade where they’re talking about time, the worksheets are actually like, what time did the baby go to sleep? And what time did the baby wake up? How long did the baby’s sleep like, if you’re a mom, have you ever been a mom, those problems are so relatable when it’s like the baby slept for an hour and a half. That’s all so relatable. And then there’s an example in a second grade my teacher is having a baby, there’s fixing sentences, there’s a sentence that says lowercase my teacher spelled te ch er is having a baby, no punctuation. So there’s like fixing sentences. But everything as much as possible in the entire packet of like 400 pages is themed with your baby. So it just makes these so much fun. If you are a Club member, be sure to grab these. They’re also available on our shop and on TPT. And we have not done a great job at promoting these, they’ve just kind of sat very quietly in the shop. But they are so much fun. I highly recommend if you’re going on a maternity leave, you can grab these for your maternity leave and leave them for yourself. But you can also like use some of them along the way. Like once we’ve already used the gender reveal, and the pregnancy announcement and the letters. These are fun to just kind of pull from and use yourself while you’re pregnant. To get the students excited about the baby and kind of bring them along the way, they’re a great way to supplement in that way as well. And finally, while though that is the end of our detailed maternity leave sub plans, we also have tons of helpful resources we want to add to make your maternity leave even more fun and when you return from your leave as well. So we plan to create more and add to our maternity leave line. So possibly by the time you’ve listened to this, there might be more. And also you can always check out our regular ready to go sub plans of wife teacher mommy Club, which is our membership where you can get access to the resources and access to coaching and all the support that you can need. Now, we will link to all these resources in the show notes so you can grab them if you’re planning to leave, they’ll make things so much easier for you and help you to implement those four steps that we just talked about on today’s episode. And if you’re listening to this episode live, this is unrelated and unrelated tangent but in case you missed it, we have a special Valentine’s Day bundle where we took all of our Valentine’s Day resources, all of them for pre K through sixth grade, it’s worth like over $250 and we slashed the price to just $27 it is a screaming deal. So if Valentine’s Day has not hit yet, be sure to check that out. The link should be in last week’s episode. Now next week, I’m going to be talking about all about teacher Sunday scaries. So if you’ve ever felt that feeling of dread on Sundays to get back into the classroom, or if you’re a parent even to like Teach your own children at home, this episode is for you. We’re talking all about those feelings what to do about them what they mean. So I will talk to you then be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it. If you’re enjoying this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take the next step with me, then you are going to love wife teacher mommy club. Our top selling resources for pre K through sixth grades have been used and loved by 10s of 1000s of teachers. The club gives you one click access to all of them to meet the needs of every child to teach while saving tons of time. Plus, you’ll have our certified life coach in your back pocket with several monthly workshops and an Ask a coach portal you can use 24/7 The combo of resources and coaching is our secret sauce to your best teacher life. Think of my team tonight as your personal team, doing the lesson planning for you and on the sidelines coaching you and cheering you on as you focus on what you do best impacting the children you teach. Plus, if you’re loving this podcast, you’ll also have access to our private podcast just for members, where I continue the conversation with all of our guests with members only bonus episodes. And don’t forget the club with VIP access to educate and rejuvenate our Summer Conference and our private Facebook community full of like minded educators support each other. You do so much for everyone else so it’s time to invest in yourself. Your teacher friends Joss will drop when they see just how quickly you finish your planning. Not to mention the glow of the happier, more fulfilled you head on over to wife teacher mommy club.com to learn more